Chapter 8: Hell Hath No Fury

It was a bright, almost burning my eyes out, sunny morning when I awoke. For a moment I didn’t know where I was, or even who I was. My head thumped as if I had been drinking absinthe all night. Every muscle in my body ached like I had spent the night circuit training while on a White Kepi March. My back felt as if it had been scourged and I had a sharp, nagging, pain in both shoulders.

During the night I had suffered vivid nightmares; so real they seemed as if I was awake. Creatures, part human, part beast, were fornicating bestially in what could have been Hell, with fire and smoke and demons with horns and forked tails. I was one of the creatures; ripping flesh with fanged teeth and clawed hands as I fornicated with a female creature that had the face of Chardonnay who in turn was clawing and biting me, drawing blood that was as black as coal. Every creature carnally coupling alongside me had the face of someone I knew. Marcus, Sybil, Gaspard, Jacquelynne, my father, Madam Joy, Sergent Zysk, Stella, Annabel, Stefan, all screaming obscenities as they tore lumps of flesh from each other in a bestial, devilish, frenzy.

I groaned aloud as Images of this dream /nightmare flashed through my mind, uncoordinated and in no semblance of order. My groaning woke Donny who was lying alongside me. She turned and enveloped me with her arms and legs, her mouth devoured mine. I must have tasted foul but she continued to suck on my tongue until, comprehension dawning, I pushed her off me.

“What time is it?” I croaked, peering at the bedside clock with sunken eyes. I was shocked to see it was 11.30 am. “Mon Dieu! I should be on parade.” I stumbled out of bed, staggered to where my clothes lay scattered on the floor and caught a glance of myself in the floor to ceiling mirror. My neck, chest, and groin were covered in love bites and there were teeth marks on both my shoulders. When I turned sideways the floor to ceiling mirror on the opposite walls showed furrows scored into my back by sharp nails. “What the ---?” I turned to Donny. “Did you give me these bites and scratches?”

“Well of course I did. I was repaying yours.”

She pulled the sheet from around her shoulders and I saw that she too was covered in love bites; on her neck, breasts and, as she lowered the sheet to her knees, her inner thighs and Mons Venus.

“Did I do that?”

“Who else?” She said. “You were like a wild beast. Never in all my life have I been so thoroughly ravished as last night. You had me every which way and where. I can hardly sit down after you plundered my booty, and your tongue went places it never had been before...”

“Stop! I don’t remember doing all that, or you doing what you say you did to me. We had sex last night, but it wasn’t bestial. It was energetic but not maniacal. We showered afterwards and I didn’t have love bites then ... did I?”

My memory was playing tricks. All I could remember was drinking Malbec. It must have been a bad bottle that knocked me out, but Donny seemed to be OK. Whatever, I knew I had to be somewhere special but for the life of me I couldn’t remember where. Then it struck me. It was Camerone Day! I blanched; to miss parading on this special day of the Legion was unheard of, especially a member of les Pionniers de la Légion étrangère. I had to get back to Quartier Vienot. I hurried towards the door.

“Ring me later,” Chardonnay said over her shoulder as she wrapped the sheet back about her and sunk back into bed.

I ran most of the way to Quartier Vienot, stumbling at times, but gradually the mist and the pain in my head began to clear. As I ran I had unsettling memory flashes of the nightmare I suffered during the night. I was passing a field of grazing cattle when I heard voices, several voices. I stopped. The cows were talking to each other! Each animal bore a human face and were having a conversation like old women at a market. I shook my head in amazement and shock; the cows gazed at me from their bovine faces while contentedly chewing the cud. ‘I must be still suffering from that terrible nightmare.’ I thought and then continued running towards the camp.

At the Guardroom the Duty Sergent looked at me in disbelief. I was dishevelled, my hair awry, and I stank of sweat, stale wine, and sex.

“Get this bag of dung out of my sight. Sling him in a cell and turn a hosepipe on him. Soissons is posted as being Absent With Out Leave,” he shouted to the Duty Caporal.

I spent the next several hours in a Guardroom cell. Eventually the Duty Sergent opened the cell door. “On your feet, Soissons. You are up in front of Commandant Vadas, and may God have mercy on your soul as the Commandant certainly will not.”

The Duty Sergent was correct. Commandant Vadas called me every foul name he could lay his tongue to, and with 25 years of service in the Legion he had quite a vocabulary. Eventually he ran out of invectives and breath.

“You have disgraced and disrespected the Legion. You have disrespected all those legionnaires who died for the legion, particularly those who died at the battle of Camerone. You have shamed and disgraced the First Foreign Regiment, and you have disgraced yourself. You are less than scum, and you can forget about ever being promoted. If I had my way I would throw you out of the Legion right now but your punishment will be to remain in the Legion until your termination of service in two years’ time – you will be a pariah during your remaining service – the man who was drunk... “ I opened my mouth to speak but his stern gaze and up held hand stayed me, “and absent from parade on Camerone Day. You will not be re-engaged.” He leaned back in his chair with a sorrowful expression on his face. “I thought better of you Soissons, and I am ashamed that a man under my command should act so dishonourably. You may have an explanation for your disgraceful behaviour but nothing you say will ever remove your shame. You have been AWOL for --” he paused and looked at his wristwatch, “ten hours. I will stop you seven days’ pay and you will spend forty eight hours in The Cooker. March him out.”

The Adjutant-chef double marched me to the far side of the massive square of Quartier Vienot to the structure known as The Cooker, which was nothing more than a galvanised metal tank. The tank was a perfect cube that measured 167 cms(5ft 6ins) height, width, and depth. Two 15 x 5 cms (6x 2in) ventilation slits had been made in all four ‘walls, and two vents, measuring 30 x30 cms (12x12ins) cut in the ‘roof’. One ‘wall’ housed a door, 120x60 cms(4 x2ft) with a sliding hatch, 46 x15 cms(18x6ins) set into it.

Incarceration in The Cooker had been a punishment in use at Sidi Bel Abbès, since the formation of the Foreign Legion. It is said a local Emir had used something similar to punish malefactors and the Legion took up the idea. To be left in The Cooker for more than 24 hours under the Algerian sun was tantamount to a death sentence, and the punishment was only used in the most extreme circumstances; stealing from a comrade being one and mutiny being another crime that merited The Cooker. I had committed neither, but in the more benign climate of southern France a man could survive longer in The Cooker than in Algeria. In Algeria the inhabitant of The Cooker was given no water or food whereas I had a litre of water and croissant every 24 hours, and a bucket for sanitation usage. I also had jeering Legionnaires outside banging on the metal walls with pickaxe handles at frequent intervals during the day until late at night, besides calling me every foul name they could lay tongue to. However I had already enjoyed that latter experience from Commandant Vadas and did not learn any new abusive terms.

I spent the day and night sat hunched on the floor. The Cooker is too small for a man my size to stand upright or lay down. In fact unless one was 160 cms (5ft 3ins) or under no man could be comfortable in The Cooker, which was part of the punishment of course. The average day time temperature in Aubagne in April is 20°C but that year the temperature was well above the average. I broiled. At night the temperature fell to just above 0°C. I shivered. I had a litre of water and a croissant given me when first thrown into The Cooker and the same the following day, but no blanket. After the bread and water had been passed through the hatch on the second morning I pushed out my brimming, malodourous, bucket. Somehow the bucket got tipped and effluent flowed in to The Cooker.

“You’re getting your own back,” I heard the Duty Caporal who had delivered the water say, but I didn’t really appreciate his witticism.

Never had I known time to pass so slowly during my time in The Cooker, and I had more time than enough to contemplate what had happened at Chardonnay du Plessier’s villa the night before Camerone Day.

I detected a whiff of subterfuge, along with a strong stench of sewerage, to the events of that night. I had been fully compos mentis until drinking the wine. Ergo something had been amiss with the wine, but whatever it was had not affected Chardonnay. So, had my glass of wine been doctored? I wracked my brains trying to remember the sequence of events before I drank the wine.

Chardonnay had brought a bottle of Malbec and two glasses into the sitting room but had not brought a corkscrew to open the bottle. She went back to the kitchen with the bottle and the glasses and returned with two filled glasses of wine. As soon as I had finished my glass of wine she went back to the kitchen and refilled it from the bottle, but did she also drain her glass and then refill it from the same bottle? I was suffering memory lapses and also having flashbacks of events and couldn’t tell if they were real or imagined. Then there were the horrifying dreams I had during the night, and the strange sights I saw, or rather thought I saw, on my way back to Quartier Vienot from Chardonnay’s villa. There was something seriously wrong with my head. Both Chardonnay and I were covered in love bites when we awoke that morning, and by my exhaustion and general feeling of debilitation we must have had exhausting and violent, even vicious, sex during the night judging by the teeth marks and nail rakes I bore yet I had no memory of it. Then there was my unusually docile behaviour when Chardonnay ordered me to her bed; for although I knew I should leave her house to get back to barracks for the morning parade I had meekly done as she said.

From deep in my memory I dredged up something I had read in The Pharmaceutical Gazette, the magazine of Chemists and Pharmacists. Even though I was no longer a chemistry student I still would pore through a copy of the journal in Aubagne Public Library. It was a link to my past life, my only link. There had been an interesting article about Scopolamine, first isolated in 1880 by a German scientist, Albert Ladenburg. In small doses (1 miligram) it helps combat motion sickness, especially sea sickness, or postoperative nausea and vomiting. However larger doses can lead to extreme docility, loss of free will, amnesia and vivid, terrifying, hallucinations in a person. There had been instances in the 1930s of scopolamine being used by police and security services to extract confessions from criminals, a so called truth serum. I mentally ticked all the symptoms I had suffered and came to the conclusion that Chardonnay du Plessier had drugged my wine with scopolamine!

And the reason for her criminal act? To gain and maintain control over her lover. She wanted me to stay with her, live with her, be at her beck and call, be nothing more than her lap-dog, toy-boy lover, or at least for as long as she wanted me as her lap- dog toy-boy lover. Unfortunately for me I would not fall in with her plan so she drugged me to gain control. It seemed preposterous, and I was still wondering how I could prove my theory when I was released from The Cooker.

I was first put under a shower and cleansed of 48 hours of sweat, grime, and effluent. Then the Regimental barber shaved off my beard. Only the Pioneers of the Legion’s Unit of Tradition wore beards and I had been thrown out of that august band. The barber was as gentle as one would expect given my behaviour, and my face resembled the battlefield of Gettysburg when finally I was released from Herr Sweeny Todt’s not so tender clutches.

No longer being a member of Les Pionniers de la Légion étrangère I had a new billet with the 3^rd Foreign Construction Company, (3CCE) who were currently working on a massive new military training site at Canjuers, about 140 kms NE of Aubagne. Most of the company were on site but a rear party was still at Quartier Vienot awaiting orders to join them.

My kit had been ejected from the billet of the Les Pionniers de la Légion étrangère and left in an untidy heap at the side of the parade square. Fortunately Stefan and Albrecht made sure none of my kit was stolen and they helped me move to my new residence. I was received in a chilled silence when I entered the barrack room. However, Hans Krause, who had been a roommate at Corte, had been posted to 3CCE from Corsica and welcomed me with a handshake and pat on my back.

“Welcome to the Company of Rejects, Professor,” he said. The majority of the members of the company were either drop outs from, or failures to join, Les Pionniers de la Légion étrangère so I was with similar status men as me, although none of them had sinned as severely as I had...

That evening Ferdi Azarian came to the room and sat on my bed. “I know something terrible must have happened for you not to be on parade, Philippe. When you are ready to talk I will be here to listen.”

It was the next evening before I felt ready to talk. Ferdi, Stefan, Hans, Albrecht and I were in one of the quietest bars in Aubagne with no legionnaires or bar girls. I told them the whole story and my suspicions regarding Chardonnay. Ferdi couldn’t believe someone would do such a thing to their lover, but Stefan nodded. “I can well believe she drugged you. I have heard some tales about Madame Chardonnay du Plessier. Stella has known her for ten years or more and says she is a dangerous woman.”

“But why would she do such a thing as to stop me attending the Camerone Day parade? “ I said.

“Remember she is a civilian and has no idea of the magnitude of the ‘crime’ you committed by being absent from that parade,” Stefan said. “As far as she is concerned it was just another ‘silly’ parade and she wanted you to stay the night and the morning. She is a woman who must always have her way, by hook or by crook.”

“She certainly got her way but by the latter rather than the former,” I said

“You will have to leave her, Philippe... “ Ferdi began but was interrupted by Stefan.

“That could make things worse for you, Professor. According to Stella, of those two lovers who committed suicide one had left Chardonnay and the other was about to. Stella knew one of the men and says he would never kill himself because he loved himself far too much for that.”

“She thinks Chardonnay killed them?” I asked, dumbfounded at the thought.

Stefan shrugged. “Maybe she paid someone to do the deed.”

“Where would she have obtained the drug she used on you?” Hans asked.

“Most pharmacies keep a small stock of scopolamine available to make up a cure for motion sickness,” I said, but did not elaborate or tell them that my parents were pharmacists who would have supplied her if offered enough money.

“She may have used the same drug on her former lovers,” Albrecht suggested. “Maybe she drugged them and then persuaded them to kill themselves. If that scolo whatever is as bad as you say it would have been the easiest thing to do.”

That hadn’t occurred to me and I shivered at the thought. “That could have been her next move.” I said. It seems that nobody leaves Chardonnay until she wants them to. I made up my mind there and then never to go anywhere near her.

Next morning I was called before Commandant Vardas. This time I was allowed to sit in a chair facing him across his desk. He eyed me disspationatly. “Your former platoon commander has high regard for you. He says you are an excellent legionnaire and insists there must be a good reason for your failure to be on parade for Camerone Day other than being drunk or entangled with a woman, or both. As far as I’m concerned there is no reason you can give that lessens your guilt, but tell me why you failed to attend the parade anyway. I owe it to Sous Lieutenant Barzin, an officer whose judgement I trust.”