Gorgeous East (32 page)

Stepping out of the mildewed stall a few minutes later, Pinard caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and was momentarily startled by what he saw: Who was this ugly, cruel-looking individual? The unfamiliar face, hawkish and blunt as the face of one of his distant Abenaki ancestors, didn’t look like the face of someone who found joy in the sound of the oboe. The skin of his arms, legs, and torso, slightly olive in tone, was covered with many crude and garish illustrations, some done back at the juvenile detention facility in Canada, others by professional tattooists—ridiculous to call them artists—in grimy military towns all over metropolitan France. The barrel-chested physique, toned but stocky, seemed ungainly, out of balance, thick up top, thin at the bottom, and resting on rickety legs bowed like the legs of a sailor too long at sea. The male organ dangled there in its thicket of hair, a dark vicious stump. Pinard turned away with a shudder. He didn’t understand himself completely and didn’t care to. His life had been hard, there wasn’t much more to say than that. He was not by nature given to self-examination, avoided looking in mirrors and had learned to shave himself in the shower by touch alone, for the simple reason he was often, as tonight, startled by the man he saw looking back.

Now he splashed himself with a cheap Italian cologne called Basta, very popular with Legionnaires, though its odor, supposedly musky, called to mind a natural gas leak, and he took his
tenue de sortie
out of its dry-cleaning bag and put it on. This was the Legion’s walking-out uniform, differing from
tenue de ville
in its pale khaki color and absence of shaggy red epaulets, and in the presence of braided lanyard rope encircling the left shoulder. Thus attired, Pinard marched the length of the parade ground to the caserne, humming one of the difficult sections of Albinoni’s
Two Oboe Concerti.
There he drank two quick glasses of red wine at the bar and went across the hall to the little store, where he impulsively dropped an unnecessarily large portion of his pay on a very small bottle of Chanel No. 5, a pair of hoop earrings strung with onyx beads, and a copy of the latest
Paris Match.

The 1e RE officers’ brothel was located on the rue Montaigne, a side street in a quiet bourgeois neighborhood about four kilometers from base in a large house that had once belonged to the mayor of Aubagne. To make up for his foolish expenditures, Pinard decided to walk out there, bypassing the line of exorbitant taxis waiting at the main gates to take Legionnaires into the dives and clip joints of Marseilles, an hour away. Those few Legionnaires fortunate enough to have steady local girlfriends were now groping in the bushes of a little park up the street, its lamps purposefully broken with well-placed stones.

The night wind felt cool on Pinard’s face as he walked. A light rain fell. Birds chirped restlessly from nests hidden beneath the boughs, tight against the trunks of the pines. It was the hour of late dinner. Military life is essentially lonely. Walking along the quiet streets of well-kept homes, families gathered inside around their cassoulets, carafes of wine gleaming on well-appointed tables, Pinard felt this loneliness acutely. He quickened his pace to a fast march, trying not to mistake the clusters of seedpods hanging from the branches of the horse chestnuts for severed heads, trying not to see the blast of the sun on the Sahara in the flare of passing headlights, and worrying out the Albioni concerti, whistling loudly now, to keep his mind off such terrible things.

The brothel’s street wall, topped with razor wire artfully entwined in a tall hedge, concealed a well-kept garden and the wide veranda on which the whores sat on summer nights in transparent dresses sipping Cynar—a bitter-tasting apéritif made from artichokes that was supposed to be an aphrodisiac but wasn’t. In the wide entrance hallway stood an age-darkened pier glass and a hat stand hung with a dozen kepis, both blue and white, the former allowed only to Legionnaires above the rank of caporal-chef. Madame Grasson—the tall, dignified Frenchwoman who looked after the whores—took Pinard’s kepi with a graceful gesture and knelt to unlace his Rangers, which were then exchanged for carpet slippers. He mounted the stairs one step at a time like a man ascending the gallows, to the tiny room where La Mogador waited naked on the bed, reading last week’s
Paris Match
. (This issue, like so many others, featured a long story on Johnny Hallyday, the aged and inexplicably popular French rocker. On the cover an image of the man at the beach with his latest starlet girlfriend—his absurd bouffant gone gray, his pecs sagging, his skin leathered by too many summers on the Côte d’Azur.)

“
Evariste, mon amour!
” La Mogador cried as Pinard came into the room. “
Oh, vien t’ens, chéri. Embrasse moi!
”

Pinard couldn’t help smiling at the enthusiastic reception—her act was perfect, artfully done—and she flung herself into his arms and kissed him on the lips, which he didn’t like much, not from a whore, and he gave her the perfume and the earrings and the new
Paris Match
. She made all the expected enthusiastic noises over these little gifts and seemed genuinely happy to see him, but he knew this was all part of the comedy they were playing. Even their conversation—to pass the awkward minutes as Pinard removed his uniform carefully, folding everything according to regulation over a clothes chair put there for that purpose—seemed like a scene from a play about a whore with a heart of gold.

“I ached for you here,” she whispered, putting a hand over her heart. “And here, even when I was with the others”—lowering her hand between her thighs—“night after night I dreamed of you!”

Pinard grunted irritably at this foolishness.

Then La Mogador moved on to a bit of cheerful regimental gossip about one of the girls, who at last retiring to marry a Legionnaire, had then promptly fallen in love with another man, and been dumped by both and was now destitute, reduced to walking the streets. After this behavior, the brothel, of course, wouldn’t take her back. It was one thing to be a whore, quite another to be a faithless one. And she chattered about the weather, about a recent shopping trip to Aix-en-Provence where she bought an expensive scarf on sale, about her brother in Algeria who had decided to go to trade school to become a diesel truck mechanic—and did Pinard think that was a good idea? Finally she asked about Pinard’s months in Western Sahara.

“Miserable,” Pinard responded. “Hot as hell. Nothing but sand, ants, and scorpions. Not a place you’d ever want to visit. Here’s hoping I never have to go back.”

“I suppose it wasn’t much of a party,” La Mogador said, frowning.

“Right about that.”

“But you’re a hero! They’ll give you a medal,
mon amour
!”

“Not me,” Pinard grunted. “You’re thinking about Caporal Keh. He was the hero. Now he’s dead.”

“How did he—” But she stopped herself, sensing Pinard didn’t want to explore this painful subject, and she dropped to her knees abruptly and pulled down his briefs. “Well, here’s something to welcome you back,
chéri
. More fun than a medal.”

As she went to work, Pinard’s mind wandered.

He looked around the room, at the bright Algerian scarves strewn on the dresser, the magazines stacked on the cowskin-covered stool, the pot of geraniums on the windowsill. He looked at the framed photographs on the table by the bed: her parents and younger brother a couple of years back on the pilgrimage to Mecca. And—brilliant touch!—a shot of himself she’d taken with her digital camera last year, hastily slipped into the kind of snap-together frame from Prix Unique that could be taken apart quickly, the photograph replaced with another of the next client. Still, La Mogador had really managed to make the place comfortable, like a room in a normal house where she lived with a couple of lusty co-locs. Pinard was not by nature a sentimentalist, but for reasons he couldn’t quite say, at the moment he appreciated the illusion. Then he realized he didn’t remember La Mogador’s real name—was it Zahra or Syeda?—and the illusion vanished.

A few minutes later she lay back on the bed with her legs in the air and Pinard went at her. He didn’t last long—it had been months; the two or three ragged whores available to UN forces in Dahkla were best avoided—and afterwards they lay side by side in silence, passing a cigarette laced with hashish back and forth. Her beautiful tawny brown skin was unblemished except for a small blue tear tattooed at the corner of her left eye. Her breasts were perfect.

“You can have me again if you want,” she whispered huskily through the pungent smoke. “You can do it as often as you like tonight”—and she reached for him with a lazy smile, already high—“I’ve made room for you,
chéri
, canceled all my other appointments.”

Pinard looked at her, amazed. Could she really love me? he found himself wondering for a crazy moment, then nearly laughed out loud at the thought.

“And what would it cost me for such an evening?”

La Mogador looked away, slightly offended. Then she looked back at him, a rueful smile touching her lips.

“The money’s already been advanced by General le Breton. He told Madame Grasson you were a hero and wanted us to treat you like one, because . . .” She hesitated—then blurted out the first true thing that evening—“But you’re a damned unlucky bastard, aren’t you,
pauvre salot
!”

“What do you mean?” Pinard said.

Then he saw the look in her eyes and knew immediately. And he felt a chill rippling along his spine that was more than the damp breath of wind from the window cracked open to let a few drops of the rain nourish the geraniums.

5.

D
id you enjoy yourself last night, Pinard?”

“
Pardon, mon general?
” Sous-lieutenant Pinard felt the muscles tightening at the back of his neck.

“Don’t be an idiot.” General le Breton licked his fleshy lips. “I’m talking about your little Kaybile girl.”

Pinard wanted to punch the fat bastard of a general in the mouth for this crack, an assault that in former days would have meant an on-the-spot court-martial, immediately followed by a firing squad—from initial blow to completely dead in less than five minutes. Even now, such an act would earn him a three-year sentence to the brutal Legion prison camp at Lac d’Islay in the icy Jura mountains. There the Legion sent the worst of the worst (multiple rapists, murderers, the chronically insubordinate, homicidal maniacs), those dangerous sociopaths who all too often managed to penetrate the ranks.

Pinard resisted the impulse. “She’s not my little Kaybile girl, sir.” He shrugged. “She’s just another whore.”

The general’s expression clouded. This response wasn’t in keeping with the accepted mythology of the regiment. More, he took it as a subtle challenge to his authority. He leaned back in his oversized leather armchair, big as a throne and as gaudy, done up with shiny brass upholstery tacs and red leather cushions. Big as it was, it still creaked beneath the general’s ungainly bulk.

“I am intimately familiar with your personnel file,” he said coldly. “Did you know that?”

“
Oui, mon general
.”

“I find your history—to say the least—distasteful. Your involvement with hard drugs, your incarceration as a juvenile, the fact that you are”—he pronounced the word with unnecessary emphasis—“a
Canadian.
Not to mention your stupid devotion to—what is that foolish instrument you play?”

“The oboe, sir.”

“Well, it’s a miracle that you are now a junior officer in this regiment.
Reçu
, Pinard?”

“
Reçu, mon general.
”

“At times I regret supporting your application for officer training. Without my recommendation you would not have been accepted at Saint-Cyr.”

“Yes, sir,” Pinard said. “Thank you, sir.” But he knew the general was lying. The officer truly responsible for his elevation was now probably dismembered, dead. Or worse, one of the two unknown
miserables
suffering hourly tortures as a prisoner of the Marabouts far away.

The general picked a stray bit of tobacco off his tongue. His huge seaweed-smelling Venezuelan cigar lay smoldering in the ceramic ashtray on his desk. He paused and took several long puffs off this foul log, smoke rising in a thick blue plume, like truck exhaust. He was known for his long, strategic pauses, an interrogation technique learned from the Jesuitical interrogators of the Deuxième Bureau.

Pinard waited, stifling a yawn. The rain had stopped after a three-day deluge. The usually bright skies above Aubagne were bright again. Beyond the tall window behind the general’s desk, Pinard could see a trio of Legionnaires at work wearing the gray overalls of punishment duty, their heads shaved
boule à zéro
. Backs bent, they raked with tiny plastic toy rakes the island of sand around the Monument aux Morts, which according to Legion tradition must never show the blemish of a single footprint, bird dropping, or stray leaf. Of course it was a highly trafficked area, constantly marched over by many boots. The Legionnaires would slave away at this absurd task all day long and far into the night; another example of Legion sketch.

A large framed portrait of Charles de Gaulle in presidential garb hung on the wall to the right of the window. More than his custom-made uniforms, Venezuelan cigars, and unmilitary girth, this portrait marked General le Breton out as a dangerous iconoclast, an officer, no matter how much he pretended to
be
the regiment, fundamentally at odds with it. For de Gaulle had hated the Legion and had sought to disband it after the failed putsch d’Alger coup d’état of April 1961. It was one of the most dramatic episodes of modern French history. Rebellious French generals—among them many from the Legion—outraged over what they saw as de Gaulle’s cynical abandonment of French Algeria, formed a secret army, the OAS, whose purpose it was to overthrow the elected government of France. They drew up plans to drop Legion paratroopers on Paris, intending to occupy the Invalides, the Élysée Palace, the Chamber of Deputies, the major department stores. The French public might have supported such a coup—a majority of the population favored keeping Algeria French. But the generals, riven by internal dissent, hesitated, fatally, for a few days. Meanwhile, de Gaulle acted. He gave a memorable, hyperbolic speech on French television imploring the nation not to support the
putschistes
, and public opinion, ever fickle, swayed in his favor. Ringleaders were quickly rounded up, imprisoned, a few guillotined following secret trials; the coup fizzled out. After that, de Gaulle punished the Legion severely for its role, court-martialing its officers, reducing its strength by 70 percent, and divesting it of its most effective weaponry.