Aïcha pressed her face to Sister Marie-Solange’s body. She breathed in the smell of her dress and her fingers gripped the rope that the nun used as a belt. When the guide described for them the system of matmouras, the subterranean silos in which the prisoners were locked and would sometimes suffocate to death, she felt tears well in her eyes. ‘Inside these walls,’ the man went on, now taking perverse pleasure in scaring the young children, ‘there are skeletons. The Christian slaves, who also built the high walls that protect the city, sometimes collapsed with exhaustion, and when that happened their masters would wall them in.’ The man’s voice took on the timbre of a prophet, a voice from beyond the grave that sent shivers down the girls’ spines. ‘In all the walls of this glorious country, in all the ramparts of the imperial cities, if you scratch beneath the stone you will find the bodies of slaves, heretics, undesirables.’ Aïcha thought about this constantly during the days that followed. Everywhere she seemed to see through to the skeletons curled up in their hiding places, and she prayed passionately for those damned souls.
A few weeks later Amine found his wife on the floor by their bed, face down, her knees pressed against her chest. Her teeth were chattering so hard that he was afraid she would bite off her tongue and swallow it, as had happened to some epileptics in the medina. Mathilde moaned and Amine picked her up. He felt her muscles contract against his hands and he gently stroked her arms to reassure her. He called Tamo and, without looking at the maid, put her in charge of his wife. ‘I have to work. Take care of her.’
When he came back that evening Mathilde was delirious. She twitched as if imprisoned by the drenched sheets and called out for her mother in her native Alsatian dialect. Her temperature was so high that her body kept convulsing, as if she were being electrocuted. At the foot of the bed, Aïcha was weeping. ‘I’m going to fetch the doctor,’ Amine announced early the next morning. He took the car and went, leaving Mathilde in the care of the maid, who seemed unfazed by her mistress’s illness.
As soon as she was alone with the patient, Tamo set to work. She made a mix of plants, meticulously measuring each ingredient, then poured boiling water on top of it. Watched by the dumbstruck Aïcha, she kneaded the aromatic paste and said: ‘We have to drive away the evil spirits.’ She undressed Mathilde, who did not react at all, and plastered this mixture over her long and dazzlingly white body. She could have drawn a malign pleasure from dominating her mistress in this way. She could have sought vengeance on this harsh, hurtful Christian woman who treated her like a savage and told her she was as filthy as the cockroaches that crawled around the jars of olive oil. But Tamo, who had wept a great deal the previous night in the solitude of her room, massaged her mistress’s thighs, put her hands to her mistress’s temples and prayed for her with sincere devotion. After an hour Mathilde grew calm. Her jaw relaxed and her teeth stopped grinding. Sitting against the wall, her fingers stained with green, Tamo repeated endlessly the same prayer, whose melody Aïcha followed by watching her lips.
When the doctor arrived he found Mathilde half-naked, her body covered with a greenish paste whose smell reached all the way to the corridor. Tamo was sitting at the patient’s bedside and when she saw the man come in with Amine she covered her mistress’s lower half with the sheet and left the room, head lowered.
‘Did the fatma do that?’ the doctor asked, pointing at the bed. The green paste had stained the sheets, the pillows, the bedspread; it had run on to Mathilde’s favourite rug, which she’d bought when she first arrived in Meknes. Tamo had left fingerprints on the walls and the bedside table, and the room looked like a painting by one of those degenerate artists who mistake melancholy for talent. The doctor raised his eyebrows, then closed his eyes for a couple of minutes that seemed to Amine to drag on forever. He wanted the doctor to rush over to his patient, make a diagnosis, find a cure. Instead of which he paced around the bed, tucking in a corner of the sheet, straightening a book on the shelf and performing various other pointless, absurd actions.
The doctor took off his jacket and folded it carefully before placing it on the back of a chair. Then he gave Amine a brief, scathing look, like a teacher reprimanding a naughty pupil. At last he leaned over the patient, put his hand under the sheet to examine her, and – as if just remembering that there was a man in the room, observing him – turned around and told Amine to leave.
Amine obeyed.
‘Madame Belhaj, can you hear me? How do you feel?’
Mathilde turned her tired face towards him. She found it hard to keep her eyes open and she looked disorientated, like a child waking up in an unfamiliar room. The doctor thought she was going to cry, to ask for help. It broke his heart to see this tall blonde woman, this woman who was probably beautiful when she made an effort, when she was given the opportunity to show her good manners. Her feet were dry and callused, her nails long and thick. He held Mathilde’s arm and took her pulse, careful not to get the green paste on his skin, then slid his hand under the sheet to palpate her abdomen. ‘Open your mouth and say, “Aaaah”.’ Mathilde did what she was told.
‘It’s malaria. Quite common around here.’ He walked up to the chair at Mathilde’s little desk and contemplated Uncle Hansi’s engravings, depicting Colmar in the 1910s, then noticed the book on the history of Meknes. A few sheets of cheap writing paper lay on the table: scrawled words, crossed out. He took a prescription slip from his leather bag and filled it out, then opened the bedroom door and looked for the husband. The only person in the hallway was a young girl, very thin, with unbrushed hair. She was leaning against the wall, holding a doll covered in stains. Amine arrived and the doctor handed him the prescription.
‘Go to the pharmacist and get this.’
‘What is it, Doctor? Is she any better?’
The doctor looked irritated.
‘Be quick.’
He closed the bedroom door and sat down beside the bed. He felt as if he ought to protect this woman, not from the disease but from the situation into which she’d got herself. Looking at this naked, exhausted white woman, he imagined the intimacy she shared with that tempestuous Arab. He could imagine it all the better after glimpsing the disgusting fruit of that union, and he felt sick with repulsion at the memory of the girl in the hallway. Of course, he knew that the world had changed, that the war had overthrown all the rules, all the codes, as if the world’s population had been poured into a jar and shaken up, bringing together bodies that, in his view, should never have come into contact. This woman slept in the arms of that hairy Arab. The lout possessed her, gave her orders. All this was unfair, indecent, it was not how things were supposed to be. Such miscegenation created disorder and unhappiness. Half-bloods heralded the end of the world.
Mathilde asked for something to drink and he raised a glass of cold water to her lips. ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she said, squeezing his hand.
Emboldened by this intimate gesture, he said: ‘Excuse me, madame, if this is indiscreet, but I am curious. How the devil did you end up here?’
Mathilde was too weak to speak. She wanted to scratch his hand. Deep within the chasms of her mind, a thought was struggling to emerge, to make itself heard. A revolt was germinating, but she didn’t have the strength to give birth to it. She wished she could think of a parry, a cutting riposte to the term that had so enraged her. ‘End up’, as if her life were no more than an accident, as if her children, this house, her entire existence were merely a mistake, a wrong turn. I have to think of a response, she told herself. I have to build a protective shell out of words.
All through the days and nights that her mother stayed in her bedroom, Aïcha worried. If her mother died, what would happen to her? She moved frantically around the house, like a fly trapped under a glass. She questioned the adults with her eyes, although she had no faith in the answers they gave. Tamo hugged her and spoke tender words. She knew that children are like dogs: they understand when something is being hidden from them and they can smell death before it comes. Amin
e, too, looked lost. The house was sad without Mathilde’s games, the idiotic pranks that she liked to pull. She would put little buckets
of water on the tops of doors or sew the sleeves of Amine’s jacket closed. He would have given anything for her to suddenly jump out of bed and organise a game of hide-and-seek in the garden. For her to tearfully tell him an Alsatian folk tale.
***
While her neighbour was ill, the Mercier widow often went to check on her and to lend her novels. Mathilde had no explanation for this sudden friendship. Before, they’d been on no more than nodding terms: a brief wave as they passed in adjoining fields, a gift of fruit when the harvest had been plentiful and it would otherwise just rot in a crate. Mathilde didn’t know that on Christmas Day the widow had got up at dawn and bitten into an orange, alone in her freezing bedroom. She unpeeled citrus fruits with her teeth and she liked the bitter taste that the zest left on her palate. That morning, she had opened the back door and, despite the frost that had paralysed all the plants, despite the icy wind that was blowing across the plain, gone out barefoot into the garden. She had a peasant’s feet: soles callused from treading the burning earth, skin thickened against the sting of nettles. The widow knew her domain by heart. She knew how many rocks there were, how many rose bushes were in flower, how many rabbits were scratching at the earth under their hutches. That Christmas morning, she gazed at the row of cypresses and gave a little cry. The beautiful row of trees that marked the border of her property now looked like a smiling mouth with a single tooth missing – pulled out, secretly, during the night. She summoned Driss, who was drinking his tea in the house. ‘Driss, come here. Quickly!’ The labourer, who served as her substitute business partner, son and husband, came running, still holding his glass. She pointed at the missing tree and Driss took a few moments to understand. She knew that he would talk about evil spirits, that he would warn her of a curse that someone had put on her, because Driss could only explain extraordinary events by invoking magic. The old woman, whose craggy face was etched with deep furrows, placed her fists on her narrow hips. She pressed her forehead against Driss’s and looked into his grey eyes. ‘What do you know about Christmas?’ she asked. The man shrugged, as if to say: ‘Not much.’ He’d seen generations of Christians pass through this land, from poor farmers to wealthy landowners. He’d seen them turning over the earth, building huts, sleeping under tents, but he knew nothing about their private lives and beliefs. The widow patted his shoulder and started laughing. Her laughter was open and glittering, like silver coins raining down on the silent countryside. Driss scratched his head and looked puzzled. This story made no sense. The tree must have been stolen away by a djinn who had taken against the old woman. He remembered the rumours about his mistress. It was said that she’d buried stillborn children on her property and even foetuses that her dry womb had miscarried. That one day a dog had arrived in the douar with a baby’s arm dangling from its mouth. Some claimed that men came in the night, seeking comfort between those withered thighs, and even though Driss spent all his days here, even though he saw how ascetic the old woman’s life truly was, he couldn’t help hearing such slander and worrying. She had no secrets from him. When her husband had been mobilised, then taken prisoner, and when he’d died of typhus in a POW camp, it was to Driss she had gone to share her distress, her grief. He admired her courage and it had shocked him to see her crying, this woman who drove a tractor, looked after the animals and gave orders to the labourers with resounding authority. He was grateful to her for standing up to their neighbour Roger Mariani, who had come here from Algeria in the 1930s, just before the widow and Joseph, her husband, and who treated his workers harshly, never satisfied until the men’s burnouses were soaked with sweat.
The widow crossed her arms and stood there, silent and motionless, for several minutes. Then she turned quickly and in perfect Arabic told Driss: ‘Let’s just forget it, all right? Go on, now, get to work.’ In the days that followed, every time she thought about the missing tree her frail body shook with laughter. She conceived a secret affection for Mathilde and her husband. And after the holidays, which she spent alone on her property, she decided to pay a visit to her neighbours. There, she found Mathilde laid low by malaria. The old woman asked what she could do, before glimpsing – on the sofa where Mathilde spent her days – some novels with well-thumbed pages. The widow offered to lend her a few books and the Alsatian woman, eyes shining with fever, squeezed her hand and thanked her.
One day, while Mathilde was still recovering from the disease, a gleaming car driven by a chauffeur in a cap stopped outside the gates of the estate. Amine saw a tall, stately man get out. The man walked up to him and in a strong accent asked: ‘May I see the owner?’
‘I am the owner,’ Amine replied, and the man looked delighted. He wore elegant, polished shoes and Amine couldn’t stop staring at them. ‘You’ll get your shoes dirty.’
‘Oh, that is not important, believe me. What interests me is this beautiful property of yours. Would you agree to show me around?’
Dragan Palosi asked Amine lots of questions. He asked him how he’d bought his land, what types of farming he was planning to develop, what his revenues were and his expectations for the coming years. Amine gave very brief replies because he was suspicious of this man with his strange accent, dressed in clothes too smart for walking the fields. Amine started to sweat and he watched from the corner of his eye as his visitor wiped his round face with a handkerchief. It occurred to Amine that he hadn’t even thought to ask the man his name. When he did at last ask – and the man told him his name – Amine gave an involuntary grimace.
The visitor burst out laughing. ‘It’s Hungarian. Dragan Palosi. I’m a doctor. I have an office on Rue de Rennes.’
Amine nodded, although he still didn’t understand. What was a Hungarian doctor doing here? Was this some kind of racket? Suddenly Dragan Palosi stopped and looked up. He stared attentively at the row of orange trees in front of him. The trees were still young but their branches were heavy with fruit. Dragan also noticed that there was a branch from a lemon tree on one of them and that its yellow fruit was mixed up with the huge oranges.
‘Amusing,’ said the Hungarian as he walked up to the tree.
‘Oh, that? Yes, it makes the children laugh. It’s a little game we’re playing. My daughter calls it the “lemange”. I grafted a pear tree branch on to a quince tree too, but we haven’t found a name for that one yet.’
Amine fell silent then. He didn’t want the doctor to think him a dilettante.
‘I would like to offer you a deal,’ Dragan said. He took Amine’s arm and led him towards a shady corner near one of the trees. He explained that for years he had dreamed of exporting fruit to Eastern Europe. ‘Oranges and dates,’ he told Amine, who had no idea what countries he was talking about. ‘I’ll take care of transporting the oranges to the port in Casablanca. I’ll pay your workers for the harvest and I’ll pay you rent for your land. Do we have a deal?’ Amine shook his hand.
Later that day, when he brought Aïcha back from school, they found Mathilde sitting on the steps that led down to the garden. The little girl ran into her mother’s open arms and thought that her prayers had not been in vain. Mathilde was going to live. Hail Mary.
***
Once she had recovered, Mathilde was happy about the weight she’d lost. In the mirror she saw her pale face, her drawn features, the bags under her eyes. She got into the habit of laying a sheet on the grass in front of the house’s French window and spending her mornings in the sun with the children while they played. She was thrilled by the arrival of spring. Every day she observed new buds flowering on the branches. She crushed the fragrant orange-tree flowers between her fingers, she leaned in close to the fragile lilac. Before her the uncultivated fields were completely covered in blood-red poppies and orange wildflowers. Here there was nothing to prevent the birds flying freely. No telegraph poles, no engine noise, no walls where they might smash
their tiny skulls. Since the return of the good weather she’d been hearing the twittering of hundreds of invisible birds, hiding in tree branches that quivered with the echo of their songs. The farm’s isolation, which had once so terrified her and sent her into the depths of depression, now captivated her in these gorgeous spring days.
One afternoon Amine came to join them. He lay down next to his son with a nonchalance that surprised Aïcha. ‘I’ve met some amusing people,’ he said to his wife. ‘I think you’d like them.’ He told her about Dragan’s visit to their property, his fanciful plans, and explained all the benefits that they might gain from this partnership. Mathilde frowned. She hadn’t forgotten how Bouchaib had taken advantage of her husband’s naivety and she feared that he was once again being lured into trouble by false promises.
‘And why did he ask you? Roger Mariani has whole fields full of orange trees, and he’s better known around here.’
Amine, hurt by his wife’s suspicions, stood up abruptly.
‘Well, you can ask him yourself. He and his wife have invited us to lunch on Sunday.’
On Sunday morning Mathilde kept complaining that she had nothing to wear. In the end she put on her blue dress, which was so old-fashioned, and she blamed Amine for his failure to understand her. She dreamed of Dior’s New Look collection, which was all the rage with the European women in the new town.
‘I wore this dress during the war, you know. It’s completely unfashionable now. What will they think when they see me in this?’
‘Just wear the haik. That way you don’t have to worry about fashion.’
Amine laughed and Mathilde hated him. She had woken up in a bad mood and this lunch, which should have excited her, now felt like a chore.
‘But what sort of lunch is it? Will it just be the four of us or will there be other guests? Are we supposed to dress up or not?’
The Country of Others Page 10