96 Jackie 1930–1962
anonymous letters, thought police. That morning, I hadn’t
been forgiven for suddenly leaving a group that was optimisti-
cally, cheerfully, and excitedly reading out the various leafl ets
published by ‘ultra’ organizations and, the evening before, for
having unpacked in the teachers’ common room a Russian
book sent to Marguerite by Michel [Aucouturier]. You can’t
imagine [.. .] how the unanimity of these sly, cowardly imbe-
ciles is intolerable when one has to face them alone, even when
one is as certain as one can be.That evening, at table, the talk was of Pierre Pfl imlin, who was to
be formally invested as head of government in Paris the next day.
He was being criticized both for planning to extend military service
to twenty-seven months and for wanting to pull out of Algeria
‘whatever he says’. There were ‘too many ambiguities in his speech’,
added a captain whom Jackie had found relatively open-minded up
until then.
Marguerite waved her hand in a way that spoke volumes and
aroused silent but violent reactions on the part of some of
those near us. [.. .] I was already on the verge of blowing a fuse.
Just when the conversation was about to turn to the incidents
in Algiers, I decided to walk out of the mess, partly because I
couldn’t breathe in such a suff ocating atmosphere of stupid-
ity and partly to show that I despised what was happening in
Algiers and was only interested in events in Paris. [.. .] Just
then, out came a few phrases on the radio, talking about the
demonstrations ‘devoted to the memory of the three glorious
French soldiers who had been vilely... etc... .’. [.. .] We left
[.. .] followed by the furious gaze of everyone else there.Once he was in the yard outside, Jackie could not help but imagine
what the group of soldiers were saying about him: ‘he doesn’t
give a damn about the murdered French soldiers’, ‘anyway, he’s
a Communist’, ‘his wife isn’t French’, ‘he’s a Jew’, ‘he reads Le
Monde and L’Express’, ‘his wife translates Russian books’... And
suddenly, at the end of his tether, he started sobbing: ‘The idea that
this gang of bloody idiots, all cosy in their unassailable, invulner-
able clear consciences, their clear consciences as thick as elephants’
hides, could condemn me as a “traitor” who approved of murder
and terrorism, suddenly got to me.’
Needing more information, Jackie and Marguerite switched on
Radio-Alger, which they usually viewed as a decent station, but
participants in the putsch had just taken it over. A message from
General Salan was announced, but ‘after half an hour of waiting
and bland music, a new voice, urgent, feverish, and silly, mon-