Promise at Dawn Page 27

  I walked toward the Simoun, climbed into the cockpit and sat down at the controls. So far as I knew nobody had seen me. But I was wrong. All over the field, in every hangar, gendarmes of the special air police had been stationed to prevent air borne “desertions,” several of which had taken place during the last few days: that very morning a Morane-230 and a Gotland had got away and landed safely on the Gibraltar race course. Scarcely had I taken my seat when I saw two gendarmes emerge from the hangar and run toward me. One of them was pulling his revolver from its holster. They were within thirty yards of me, and I still couldn’t get the propeller to turn. After one last desperate effort, I jumped out. A dozen or so airmen had come out of the hangar and were looking at me with obvious interest. They did not make the slightest attempt to intercept me when I scampered past them like a rabbit but they had plenty of time to study my face. To cap my imbecility, still acting under the influence of the “conquer or die” atmosphere in which I had been stewing for the last few days, I drew my revolver when I jumped from the Simoun and still had it in my hand as I raced over the grass—which, needless to say, would not have helped me at all before a court-martial. But I’d made up my mind that there would be no court-martial. In my state of mind, I honestly believe that I wouldn’t have let myself be taken alive; and, since I was a very good shot, I tremble to think what might have happened if I had not made good my escape. This I did, however, without much difficulty. After a while, I hid my revolver and, in spite of much blowing of whistles behind me, slowed down and calmly walked past the guard at the gate and out of the camp. I found myself on the main road and had gone no more than fifty yards when a bus drove into sight. I signaled to the driver and planted myself firmly in the middle of the road. It stopped. I got in and plumped myself down beside two veiled women and a white-robed bootblack. I heaved a sigh of relief. I had got myself into a pretty pickle but didn’t feel the least bit worried. On the contrary. I had finally consummated my break with the armistice. Now, at last, I was a rebel, a desperado, dangerous, iron-willed, tough—the real thing. The war had just been declared all over again; there was no longer any question of backing out. I could feel on my face my mother’s admiring gaze, and I could not keep from smiling with an air of superiority, and even from laughing aloud. I actually think, God forgive me, that I muttered something rather pretentious to her, wiping the sweat from my brow, something along the lines of “Just you wait, this is only the beginning.” Sitting in that filthy bus among those veiled moukères and white burnouses, I crossed my arms on my chest and felt myself fully capable of doing all that she expected of me. To push my insubordination to the limit, I lit a cigar—it was forbidden to smoke in buses—and there we sat, my mother and I, for a moment or two, smoking and silently congratulating each other. I had not the least idea what I was going to do but I had assumed so threatening an air that, when I suddenly caught sight of myself in the driver’s mirror, I was so frightened that the cigar fell from my lips.

  I had only one regret. I had left my leather jacket in my quarters and, without it, I was feeling rather lonely. I am a poor hand at solitude. As I have said before, I form attachments very easily. That was the only shadow on the general bright scene. I clung to my cigar, but cigars have only a short life and mine seemed to be burning down more quickly than usual in the dry air of Africa and, at any moment now, would leave me entirely alone.

  While I smoked, I made my plans. It was a sure thing that the military patrols would comb the town for me. At all costs I must avoid those places where my uniform would stand out against the native background. The best solution, I decided, would be to lie low for a few days, then to make for Casablanca and try to get aboard some ship about to sail. I had heard that the Polish forces were being evacuated to England and that English ships were picking them up at various ports. The first thing was to get lost, to get myself pretty well forgotten. I derided therefore to spend the first forty-eight hours in the bousbir—the red-light district, where, in the unceasing flood of soldiers of all armies coming for solace, I had a good chance of passing unnoticed. My mother seemed to be a little bit uneasy at my choice of a hideout, but I at once gave her all the necessary assurances. I got out of the bus in the Medina and made my way to the red-light district.

  CHAPTER 33

  The Meknès Bousbir, a complete town in itself surrounded by a high fortified wall, contained at that time thousands of prostitutes of all nationalities and races, living and working in several hundred “houses.” Armed sentries were posted at the gates and military police patrolled the streets, but they were far too busy stopping brawls among soldiers of different armies to pay much attention to a quiet-looking fellow like myself.

  The bousbir, on the morrow of the armistice, was seething with an activity as exuberant as it was single-minded. The physical requirements of soldiers, considerable enough in normal times, increase still more in time of war and defeat brings them to a sort of exacerbated paroxysm. The narrow lanes between the houses were crammed with troops—two days a week were reserved for the civilian population but I was lucky to have hit on a “services” day. Men of the Foreign Legion in their white képis, Goumiers with their khaki tarbushes, the Spahis in their burnouses, red pompons of the Navy, scarlet headdresses of the Senegalese, flowing white seroual trousers of the Camel Corps, eagle badges of the Air Force, coffee-colored turbans of the Annamites, faces black, yellow and white—the whole of the French Empire was there, in a deafening din of juke boxes sending cataracts of sound through the open windows—I particularly remember the voice of Rina Ketty assuring her audiences that “J’attendrai, j’at-ten-dra-ai toujours, la nuit et le jour, mon amour,” while the Army, cheated of its victories and its battles, got rid of its unspent virility on the bodies of a generous supply of women—Berber, Jewish, Armenian, Greek, Polish—black, white, yellow—an activity so violent and often conducted with such savagery that the provident madams had to forbid the use of beds and put mattresses on the floor in order to reduce, as far as possible, damage to their property and the cost of breakage.

  From the prophylactic centers, marked with a red cross, came the smells of permanganate, black soap and a particularly sickening ointment with a basis of calomel, while Senegalese male nurses in white smocks fought with generous doses the menace of spirochetes and gonococci which, but for this sanitary Maginot Line, might well have struck another fatal blow at a thus twice defeated army. Constant fights were breaking out among Legionnaires, Spahis and Goumiers over questions of precedence but, generally speaking, the merry-go-round turned without a stop, a girl often averaging up to a hundred men a day, in a continuous stream, each warrior following in the wake of another, for a payment varying from a hundred sous, plus ten sous for a towel, to twelve or twenty francs in the establishments de luxe, where the girls appeared fully dressed, instead of waiting naked on the stairs. Sometimes a girl, half-hysterical from overwork or hashish, would rush naked, screaming, into the alley, there to indulge in a display of exhibitionism which, in the interests of decency, the M.P.’s immediately interrupted. It was in this picturesque and appropriate quarter of the town that I sought refuge in the establishment run by a certain Madame Zoubida, judging, with a considerable degree of shrewdness, that I would be safer from pursuit in the midst of that apocalypse than in any other sanctuary, since the churches had lost that character which, in the old days, had been their exclusive privilege. There, for one day and two nights, I fumed and fretted under most delicate circumstances.

  I found myself in a situation which could scarcely have been more painful for a man animated by the noble feelings and exalted intentions which were mine at that time and under the appalled eyes of a mother whose feelings and intentions were even more noble and heroic. The bousbir closed its gates at 2 A.M. At that hour, the iron grilles of the houses were padlocked and the girls sent off to bed; however, by special arrangement with the madams, and in return for certain courtesies and a fair remuneration, the police were willing to keep th
eir eyes shut if a warrior had decided to spend a whole night with a girl. This was explained to me by Madame Zoubida a few minutes before the normal closing time of her establishment. It is not hard to imagine the nature of the dilemma by which I was faced. Until that moment, I had been scrupulously careful not to play the part of a “consumer.” I attached great importance to arriving in England in good health and was not disposed to expose my blood to the contact of this sewer. It was not a matter of principle. I had been a soldier for seven years, I had seen a great deal, and done no less, and the adventurous men we were then, always in a hurry, whose lives might be cut short at any moment, and were, nine times out of ten, were not in the habit of seeking forgetfulness and release from tension only in the company of well-bred young women. It was simply that the most elementary caution warned me not to plunge into such polluted water at that particular moment. I did not wish to present myself to the leader of Free France in a physical condition which might well have made him raise his eyebrows. But the only alternative to spending the night with a girl in the establishment was to be shown the door and to fall into the hands of the military patrols on watch in the narrow streets, which at that hour were almost deserted. It would have meant arrest and court-martial. Nor was that all, since, if I wished to stay hidden in Ma Zoubida’s house for any length of time without arousing her suspicion, I would have to show exemplary zeal and assiduity and justify convincingly my uninterrupted sojourn under her roof for one whole day and two more nights. It would have been difficult to feel less enthusiasm than I did in these circumstances. My thoughts were elsewhere. Apprehension, nervous tension, exasperation and a noble-minded impatience to raise myself emotion ally and spiritually to the level of the tragedy my country was living through, the thousand and one tormenting questions which I was perpetually asking myself—all this made me peculiarly ill suited to the role of a gay dog. The least I can say is that my heart wasn’t in it. One can well imagine the consternation with which my mother and I looked at each other. I made a resigned gesture to express the fact that I had no choice, that once again, though in a most unexpected manner, I was determined to do my best. Then, taking my courage in two hands, I plunged head first into the raging elements. The monkey gods of my childhood must have been splitting their sides at the sight of me. I could imagine those experts in absurdity, having their fun, roaring with laughter, holding their bellies in the excess of their mirth, whip in hand, their coats of mail and their spiked helmets glittering in the shady light of their dubious heaven, now and again pointing a derisive finger at the apprentice of a lofty idealism who was now putting the final touch to his possession of the world, holding in his arms something which bore no resemblance to the noble trophies on which he had set his heart. Never had my longing for beauty and dignity received a more mocking answer than in the interminable hours I spent lying there with my face in the mud.

  Twenty years have gone by and the man who has left his youth behind him can remember, with a great deal less solemnity and a little more irony, the youth he was then, with such seriousness and such fierce pride. We have told one another everything, yet we are still strangers. Was I really that quivering and idealistic dreamer, so naïvely loyal to a nursery tale and so intent on being the master of his fate? My mother had told me too many beautiful tales, and with too great a talent, in those whispering hours at the dawn of life when a child’s every fiber takes an indelible imprint; we had exchanged too many promises and I felt bound by all of them. With such a longing for the heights in one’s soul, every step becomes a fall. Now that the fall has truly taken place, I know that my mother’s talent long compelled me to see life as the raw material for a future masterpiece and I broke my back trying to achieve it in accordance with some golden rule of beauty and happiness. My longing for perfection, my dream of dealing with life as if it were ink and paper, and with destiny as if it were literature, made me attack with impatient hands a shapeless lump of clay which no human determination can ever mold, but which has itself the frightening power insidiously to shape a human being according to its will. The harder you try to leave your mark upon it, the better it succeeds in imposing on you a form of its own, tragic, grotesque, insignificant or comic, until at last you find yourself lying on the ocean edge, in a solitude broken by the barking of a seal and the cries of gulls, surrounded by thousands of motionless sea birds reflected in the mirror of wet sand. Instead of juggling to the best of my ability with three, four or five balls, as all artists have done, I was trying to live something which can only be sung. I have wandered in pursuit of something for which art had given me a thirst but which life could not quench. I have long since ceased to be the dupe of my poetical inspiration and, if I still dream of transforming the world into a happy garden, I know now that it is not so much because I love my fellow men as because I love gardens. And I have also learned that if, for me, there is no beauty without justice, yet life cares little for logic, and can be beautiful without being just. And though the taste for perfection is still upon my lips, it is as an ironic smile—a smile that will be, no doubt, my last work of literature, if when the end comes I have any talent left.

  Sometimes I would light a cigar and stare at the ceiling, asking myself how I came to be there instead of describing heroic arabesques in a sky of glory. The arabesques I was forced to describe had nothing heroic about them, and the glory I had acquired in the establishment when my marathon ended was not of the kind that leads to burial in the Pantheon. Yes, the monkey gods must have been jubilant. Their moralizing and didactic side must have made the most of the situation. One foot on my back, with how much satisfaction they must have leaned over that human hand outstretched to steal the divine fire but closing only upon the humblest clod of dirt. A vulgar laugh sometimes reached my ears and whether it was those jackals giving vent to their hilarity, or merely the laughter of the soldiers waiting their turn, I cannot say with any certainty. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t yet beaten.

  CHAPTER 34

  I was providentially released from my stretch of hard labor by a comrade who was awaiting his turn in the infirmary attached to the establishment. He told me that I was no longer in serious danger, that Lieutenant Colonel Hamel, who commanded the squadron, had obstinately maintained, in the teeth of the evidence, that the attempted desertion and theft of an airplane could not possibly be laid at my door, for the very good reason that I had not arrived in Africa aboard any of his aircraft. Thanks to this testimony, for which I here wish to express my gratitude to that true Frenchman, I was not posted as a deserter, my mother was not bothered by the Vichy regime, and the North African police gave up looking for me. All the same, this new situation, favorable though it was, still condemned me to subterfuge and extreme prudence. I had left all my money with Ma Zoubida and had to borrow from my friend bus fare to Casablanca, where I intended to slip aboard an outward-bound ship.

  I could not resign myself to leaving Meknès without paying one last furtive visit to the air base. It must already have been obvious that I don’t find it easy to say good-by to what is dear to me, and the thought of leaving my beloved leather jacket behind was very painful. Never had I needed it more than now. It was a familiar and protective carapace, which gave me a feeling of security and toughness. It helped me to hide under an aspect slightly menacing, resolute and not a little dangerous to those who might try to come too close or peek at me too attentively; in short, the little boy lost could feel secure and pass unnoticed. But I was never to see it again. When I reached the camp, and went into the hut I had formerly occupied, all I saw was a naked peg; the jacket had vanished.

  I sat down on the bed and began to cry. How long I remained there, looking at the peg, with the tears running down my cheeks, I don’t know. Now I really had lost everything.

  At last I dropped off to sleep, and so extreme was my state of nervous and physical exhaustion that I slept for sixteen hours and awoke in exactly the same position in which I had fallen across the bed, my cap over my eyes.
I took a cold shower and left the camp to look for a bus to take me into Casa. On my way I found a happy surprise awaiting me in the person of an itinerant vendor whose glass jars contained, among other delicacies, some dill pickles. This was proof indeed, had I needed proof, that someone who knew me well was still watching over me. I sat down on the ground and made an early breakfast off half a dozen of them. I felt better, and stayed where I was for a moment or two in the sun, torn between a longing to eat a few more and the feeling that, in the tragic circumstances in which France found herself, it behooved me to display some degree of stoicism and sobriety. I was finding some difficulty in tearing myself away from the fatherly barrow man and his glass jars. I even wondered, in a dreamy sort of way, whether, perhaps, he had a daughter whom I could marry. I saw myself very well as a dealer in dill pickles, with a loving and hard-working wife at my side and a grateful, hard-working father-in-law. I felt so irresolute and lonely that I very nearly let the Casa bus go past me. In a desperate burst of energy, I jumped to my feet, stopped the bus, and, with a good supply of pickles wrapped in a newspaper, I got in, pressing those faithful friends to my bosom. It is curious how long the child can survive in the adult.