The Centurions (8 page)

“They're not, they're against us.”

“You're wrong. Last February they evacuated all the survivors of the
6
th Laotian Light Infantry, including the wounded, right through the
308
Division lines. The Viets may hold the valleys, but the Méos hold the heights.”

“That was in February. Since then the Viets have overrun the highlands and conscripted the Méos. Your plan's feasible, but there are the Viets to reckon with, the whole Vietminh world, Vietminh organization, the Vietminh intelligence service . . .”

“It can't be true. No Méo has ever served any master except his own fantasy and has never been known to betray a guest.”

Glatigny, who had woken up and heard them whispering together, came over and joined them.

“I'm off,” Esclavier told him. “I'd be grateful if you would look after Lescure for me.”

“Can I come with you?”

“Impossible. There's only the remotest chance of success, even for one man on his own. Boisfeuras doesn't think I'll get away with it, and he may be right.”

“Have you got any provisions?”

“No.”

Without a sound Glatigny went and got Lacombe's kit-bag.

“This might come in useful. That fat swine won't ever need it in an attempt to escape.”

“Too heavy,” said Esclavier.

He only took three tins. Boisfeuras handed him a silver piastre which he carried strapped to his leg by a band of adhesive tape.

“This is the only currency the Méos recognize. You'll either get yourself killed or be recaptured. Good luck.”

Esclavier gave him a tap on the shoulder.

“You were chasing her yourself, you old bastard, while pretending to defend her virtue. Just like the Viets. That was the best policy perhaps. Take good care of Lescure, Glatigny. He did something I could never have done—fought and showed courage for someone other than himself.”

Esclavier plunged out into the dark and was instantly soaked by the rain. There was a light flickering in the guard-post hut. The guard-post lay to the north; he would therefore have to move in the opposite direction and take cover in the jungle at once.

“Halt!”

The voice came out of the rain and the darkness.

Esclavier replied:

“
Tou-bi
, prisoner, very bad stomach.”

This was the password which enabled them to make the most of Vietminh modesty and leave their huts at night, for the “Hygiene Rule,” which was one of the four rules of a soldier in the People's Army, decreed that “the natural functions had to be performed in private.”

The sentry let him pass and Esclavier clambered up a slope. He was swallowed up at once in the jungle; the creepers were like tentacles that tried to wrap themselves round him; the thorns were like teeth that tried to tear him to shreds. It was impossible for him to maintain a straight course; there was only one idea in his mind—to keep climbing so as to reach the ridge. Once there, he would be able to take his bearings.

Every now and then he almost collapsed from exhaustion; his eyelids felt like lead; he was tempted to lie down for a bit and go to sleep and resume his march a little later. But he remembered the window in the Compiègne train, squared his shoulders and pushed on. He was right not to have waited any longer before escaping. He knew how quickly a man can lose his strength in a camp where the work is hard and the food insufficient, and how quickly he can lose his courage in the demoralizing company of grousers who are more or less resigned to their condition as prisoners.

By daybreak he had reached the ridge and was able to rest. The valley no longer existed; it was lost in the mist. He was in the country of the Méos who live above the level of the clouds.

In the legendary days of the Jade emperors, the masters of the Ten Thousand Mountains, a dragon had come to China and laid waste the country. It had devoured the armies that were sent out against it and also the warriors clothed in their magic armour. The emperor had then made a promise that anyone who rid him of the dragon would be given his daughter's hand in marriage and half the kingdom. The big dog Méo had slain the dragon and came to claim his reward. The emperor was unwilling to keep his promise but he also feared the dog's strength. One of his counsellors had then suggested a subterfuge. Admittedly, he had promised half of his kingdom to whoever slew the dragon, but he had not specified which half. Why not the upper half? As for the daughter, there was no problem. The emperor had a large number of them and spent most of his time begetting even more.

Thus it was that the dog Méo was given the hand of the emperor's daughter in marriage and, as a dowry, all the land in the empire that lay above the level of the clouds. His descendants, the Méos, wore a silver dog-collar in memory of him. They loved animals, lived in the highlands and, because they were after all descendants of the Jade Emperor, looked down on all the other races, especially the Vietnamese of the deltas.

Esclavier was extremely fond of the Méos even though they were so dirty that their squat little bodies, with calves as thick as a Tibetan sherpa's, were always jet black. They never mixed with the lowlanders, the servile and ingratiating Thais, they admitted no social or family organization; some of them even declined all form of communal life. They kept to their mountain ridges, the last anarchists of the world.

The sun blazed down. Esclavier began to feel thirsty. He kept following the ridge of the mountain and in the afternoon a Fleet Air Arm “Corsaire” flew over him very low. He waved at it wildly, but the pilot did not see him. In any case what could he have done? He had to push on, alone and unaided, and the thought of himself, lost in the midst of the elephant grass, his throat parched with thirst, was strangely beguiling.

He bypassed the first Méo village he saw tucked away behind a mountain peak. He felt it was still too close to the Vietminhs and to Dien-Bien-Phu.

After a further three hours' march he came across a
ray
: a section of the forest that had been burned down. In the cinders the Méos had planted some hard rice, vegetables and poppies. There were four women there, dressed in rags, with panniers on their backs, barefoot—their feet looked almost monstrous—with their calves encased in leggings. They were collecting vegetable marrows. Esclavier knew that he ought to push on farther, but he was at his last gasp, he felt terribly thirsty and it would soon be dark.

He went up to the women. They did not look at all scared but uttered little guttural exclamations and turned their broad flat faces towards him. They smelt so dreadful that he was almost sick.

“It must be a question of habit,” Esclavier said to himself. “At Véronique II, towards the end, I was hardly conscious of the stench of the corpses.”

A male Méo appeared, with his silver collar round his neck and a primitive hunting-bow in his hand. He was barefoot, his hair falling over his eyes, and wore a short jacket and black trousers.

Esclavier did not know how to communicate with him. He showed him the silver piastre and the sullen face came to life. The captain went through the motions of eating, bent down, plucked a marrow and bit into it. It was juicy and full of flavour.

“Tou-Le,” he said, “cousin Tou-Bi, village Bam-ou-Tio.”

The Méo made a sign that he had understood and walked ahead. They kept going until it was dark. Tireless, the Méo trotted along hair-raising paths which invariably followed the line of the steepest slope. He had to stop and wait for the Frenchman every two hundred yards.

At last they reached the village, a few thatch huts on low piles. The shaggy little mountain ponies, as tireless as their owners, stood with their heads inside the houses where the feeding-troughs were, the rest of their bodies in the open.

Tou-Le was there, indistinguishable from any of the others, a little older perhaps, a little more shrivelled, fossilized by age and opium. He recognized Esclavier at once and bowed low before him in token of his friendship. The captain was saved, he felt like laughing. The Méos and the highlands still belonged to the French. Boisfeuras was wrong, which was only to be expected since he did not know this region very well.

The Méos had killed a suckling-pig; it was roasting over the embers, exuding a delicious smell of grilled meat. The stodgy hot rice was spicy and dished up in little baskets. Esclavier knew the customs of the country; he rolled it into a ball between his fingers and popped it into his mouth after first dipping it in a red sauce.

The flames in the hearth cast flickering shadows on the inside walls of the hut and red glints were reflected in the eyes of the horses as they snorted and shook their chains.

Esclavier picked up a sliver of bamboo and, in the cinders in front of the fireplace, traced out the route he wanted to take to reach the Nam-Bac valley.

Tou-Le miraculously seemed to understand and showed his approval by nodding his head. He then brought out a bottle of
choum
. The two men gulped down the crude rice wine and belched like a couple of Chinese merchants.

Tou-Le suggested a pipe of opium, Esclavier refused with thanks. He was not used to the stuff and he was afraid he might be too tired to walk next day. Everyone said that Méo opium was the best that could be found in South-East Asia. But a paratrooper never indulged in it; that particular vice was the prerogative of naval or staff officers. The Méos all smoked it; for them it took the place of tobacco and appeared to have no harmful effects.

And so, while Tou-Le puffed at his pipe in the flickering light of the oil lamp and contentedly exhaled the thick pungent smoke, Esclavier fell asleep stretched out in front of the hearth.

A line of verse came back to him, a poem of Apollinaire's:

Under Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine . . .

He would one day watch the Seine flow under Mirabeau bridge, as a free man, having escaped from this hell of green caterpillars which continued to haunt Lescure. He would smile at the first pretty girl he met and ask her out to dinner at a little restaurant on the Ile St. Louis . . .

A kindly hand was gently shaking him. With an effort he opened his eyes. A
bo-doi
was leaning over him; all he could see was his ready-made smile, his slit eyes and his helmet.

The impersonal voice started off:

“President Ho wants the French prisoners to rest after their long exertions . . .”

A nightmare had insinuated itself into his dream. The young girl took him gently by the hand; she caressed him and he fancied he saw in her rather sad eyes that she was ready to surrender.

But the
bo-doi
continued to shake him gently:

“President Ho is also anxious that the prisoners should not catch cold. Accept this blanket offered you by a soldier of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam so that after a good sleep you may recover the strength which you have wasted in vain.”

Esclavier sat up with a start. Tou-Le had disappeared and he saw a sentry standing at the entrance to the hut, his bayonet glinting in the moonlight . . .

Kind-hearted Tou-Le, the free Méo of the highlands, had delivered him into the hands of the little green men of the valleys and the deltas. Esclavier felt too weary; all he wanted was to sleep and let the night find some solution or no solution at all.

In the morning Esclavier followed the Viets outside, spitting on the floor as he left the hut in which a man of the ancient law had failed to observe the sacred rules of hospitality. Tou-Le turned his face away and pretended he had not seen him. This evening he would smoke a few more pipes than usual and would go on doing so until the day came when “for the public good” some political commissar or other would forbid him any more opium. Then he would die; that was what Esclavier hoped.

The four soldiers escorting the captain showed him every consideration and kindness. They were in high spirits; they sang French marching songs to Vietnamese melodies and helped him over the difficult places and slippery monkey-bridges. Like the Cochin-Chinese partisans he had commanded six months earlier in the marshy forest of the Lagna, they were lively and agile; their weapons were well cared for; they could march without making a sound and, when they took off their helmets, they displayed the shock-headed locks of mischievous schoolboys.

At dusk they reached a main trail deeply pitted by the wheels of heavy trucks. Small detachments of soldiers or coolies kept passing them in both directions. They all trotted along with the same rapid jerky gait.

By the side of the trail the
bo-dois
lit a fire and started cooking their evening meal: rice and lentil soup with one or two little chunks of pork floating in it. On a banana leaf they laid out a few pinches of coarse salt and a handful of wild peppers.

They ate in silence, then one of them brought out a packet of Chinese cigarettes made specially for the Vietminh. He offered one to Esclavier.

The little group surrendered themselves to the peace of the night. Their leader was reluctant to drag himself away from the glow of the fire. With an effort he rose to his feet, adjusted his equipment, put his helmet on and resumed the inscrutable mask of a soldier of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam. He turned to the prisoner:

“I must now take you to an officer of the division who wishes to interrogate you.”

It was an underground shelter with a floor made of gravel, illuminated by an acetylene lamp. At a table sat a man who looked a great deal more distinguished than the majority of his compatriots. His features seemed to be finely chiselled in very old gold; his hands were long and slender and beautifully kept.

“Your name?”

“Captain Philippe Esclavier.”

Esclavier had recognized the inimitable voice. The first time he had heard it was in the dark, when it had ordered him to help push the Jeep.

“I wasn't expecting to see you again so soon, Captain. Have you been decently treated since our last conversation in the Muong-Phan basin? It seems, however, that you didn't follow my advice. I'm glad your rather childish escapade has ended without your coming to any harm. You have now been able to see for yourself how deeply united our nation is, how close the bonds are between the mountain people and those of the lowlands and the deltas, and this despite all the efforts that the French colonialists have made to split us for the last fifty years.”