'They'll kill us anyway,' laughed the gendarme and emptied the magazine
in one long despairing burst. Andre started towards him, perhaps to pull
him away from the gun, but
his resolve did not carry him that far. His hands dropped to his sides,
clenching and unclenching. His lips quivered and then opened to spill
out his terror.
'No!' he screamed. 'Please, no! No! Oh, God have mercy.
Oh, save me, don't let this happen to me, please, God. Oh, my
God.' He stumbled to the side of the truck and clambered on to it. The
truck was slowing as it ran into the platform. He could see men coming
with rifles in their hands, shouting as they ran, black men in dirty
tattered uniforms, their faces working with excitement, pink shouting
mouths, baying like hounds in a pack.
Andre jumped and the dusty concrete of the platform grazed his cheek and
knocked the wind out of him. He crawled to his knees, clutching his
stomach and trying to scream. A rifle butt hit him between the
shoulder-blades and he collapsed. Above him a voice shouted in French.
'He is white, keep him for the general. Don't kill him.' And again the
rifle butt hit him, this time across the side of the head.
He lay in the dust, dazed, with the taste of blood in his mouth and
watched them drag the others from the truck.
They shot the black gendarmes on the platform, without ceremony,
laughing as they competed with each other to use their bayonets on the
corpses. The two children died quickly torn from their mothers, held by
the feet and swung head first against the steel side of the truck
Old Boussier tried to prevent them stripping his wife and was bayoneted
from behind in anger, and then shot twice with a pistol held to his head
as he lay on the platform.
All this happened in the first few minutes before the officers arrived
to control them; by that time Andre and the four women were the only
occupants of the truck left alive.
Andre lay where he had fallen, watching in fascinated skin-crawling
horror as they tore the clothing off the women and with a man to each
arm and each leg held them down on the platform as though they were
calves to be branded, hooting with laughter at their struggling naked
bodies, bickering for position, already unbuckling belts, pushing each
other, arguing, some of them with fresh blood on their clothing.
But then two men, who by their air of authority and the red sashes
across their chests were clearly officers, joined the crowd. One of them
fired his pistol in the air to gain their attention and both of them
started a harangue that slowly had effect. The women were dragged up and
herded off towards the hotel.
One of the officers came across to where Andre lay, stooped over him and
lifted his head by taking a handful of hair.
'Welcome, mon ami. The general will be very pleased to see you.
It is a pity that your other white friends have left us, but then, one
is better than nothing.' He pulled Andre into a sitting position, peered
into his face and then spat into his eyes with sudden violence.
'Bring him! The general will talk to him later.' They tied Andre to one
of the columns on the front verandah of the hotel and left him there. He
