“I manage, don’t sweat it.”
It was a point of honor with Eliott not to let his handicap be a nuisance for people. In fact, it had become something of an advantage. The cops once showed up in the Manet tower lobby for an ID check, when Eliott was loaded like a mule. Not only did the cops not search him, but they even carried him up to the mezzanine so he could take the elevator. Eliott pointed out that you really had to be stupid to stick a stairway right in front of an elevator. The cops agreed, feeling embarrassed, as if they’d drawn up the plans themselves.
“Any news?”
“Nothing new. Dead as a doornail. If we don’t score tomorrow, I won’t have anything left.”
With the Meryems sidelined, the problem of hashish resupply had reached a critical level. Hacine had even tried to call his brother, who lived in Paris.
“What about your brother?” asked Eliott, by coincidence.
Hacine shrugged. They were silent for a moment, then Eliott continued:
“D’you go into town?”
“Yeah.”
“What for?”
“Nothing special.”
Eliott didn’t pursue it, and Hacine went to sit on a low wall nearby.
“Hot as hell already.”
“Yeah.”
Hacine began contemplating the decorations on the bumper-car carousel: Michael Jackson, werewolves, a mummy, Frankenstein. It was gaudy and beautiful, with colored lights that were switched on at nightfall. In the last few years, the other carnival attractions hadn’t bothered to come. Hacine was very fond of cotton candy.
The temperature gradually rose, and the two boys moved into the shadow of the boules court shelter. From there, they could see customers coming. Except that for the last two days, they’d all gone away empty-handed. The buildings around them rose indifferent and cube-like. Dust motes floated in the sunlight.
After lunchtime the others began to show up. The gang usually consisted of maybe ten guys. There was Djamel, Seb, Mouss, Saïd, Steve, Abdel, Raduane, and little Kader. They all lived in the neighborhood. They got up late and came on foot or by scooter. They stayed for a while, went off to take care of stuff, then came back. This way, there was a continuous stream of familiar faces, a rotation of friends that broke up the monotony of dealing. Whatever the case, by the afternoon there were almost always five or six boys endlessly waiting under the shelter, leaning against the fence or perched on a low wall, spitting on the ground and smoking joints. Sometimes older guys came by for a chat. A handshake, a hand on the heart, a few quick words: How’s the family, how’re things, doin’ okay? Most of them had settled down. They were now doing temp work or had little short-term contracts with Carglass or Darty. Sami had just opened his kebab stand near the station. People asked him how business was. Even when he put a good face on it, you could sense the anxiety, the constant fear of bankruptcy. To think he had once been the biggest wholesaler in the valley. Now he drove a little Peugeot 205. Feeling ill at ease, the boys promised to stop by later, and Sami went off to work, his love handles stuffed into an OM Marseille T-shirt, with his two kids and his credit card debt. Then the little kids rode back from the swimming pool on their bicycles. There was some teasing back and forth, but overall there wasn’t much to do while waiting for the bumper-car stand to open. Often, heat and boredom would go to people’s heads like liquor. Guys would even start fighting, just to relieve the boredom and idleness. Then calm would fall again, like a hammer.
Soon little Kader showed up on his scooter. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and rode in flip-flops. He did a wheelie, for show. Seb was there too, with his 49ers hat shoved down to his ears.
“So what are we doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. We move.”
“So, go ahead and move.”
“I mean tonight, man. It’s Friday. What’re we doing? For real.”
“Let’s get a case of beer.”
“Yeah.”
“You guys give me a pain. Swigging beer out of doors, like bums.”
Hacine had spoken, so there was nothing more to be said. He’d been in a foul mood since the start of vacation. It was understandable. His scooter had died in June and since then he’d had to walk everywhere, like a grunt. It started with the ignition, then all of a sudden the cylinders, pistons, rings, and spark plugs all went to hell. With the shortage of hash on top of everything, it was getting really hard to lead a normal life. Hacine spat between his front teeth. Nobody stirred. Eliott took it on himself to roll a blunt.
By a little after three, time had become like a paste, greasy and infinitely stretchable. It was the same thing every day. In midafternoon, a diffuse numbness took hold of the projects. From the open windows you no longer heard the sounds of children or TV sets. The towers themselves seemed ready to collapse, swaying in the waves of heat. Every so often, the howl of a tricked-out motorbike would slash through the silence. The boys blinked and wiped away the sweat staining their hats, lids containing their nervous edginess. The boys felt sluggish and hateful, an acrid taste of tobacco on their tongues. They felt they should be somewhere else, have a job, in an air-conditioned office, maybe. Or be at the seaside.
For his part, Hacine was seriously worried. He hadn’t seen ten customers since the morning. New sources of supply must have sprung up. Supply and demand obeyed the laws of magnetism and had probably been drawn to each other elsewhere, like rejected lovers. If the shortage lasted much longer, he and his friends would be screwed; they would lose everything. He let it be known that his brother might bail them out, but he didn’t really believe it. That son of a bitch was doing business for real, with guys from Bobigny. He was living outside Paris and hadn’t been to Heillange in at least three years. He wasn’t answering phone calls. Couldn’t be counted on. If this went on, they would have to turn to the inbreds. Those guys always had contacts and connections. But Hacine didn’t like the idea at all. Doing business with those guys was really risky. They were capable of anything. Besides, they fucked each other, the degenerates. Hacine felt sick just thinking of it.
He was turning all this over in his head when Fred showed up. He was a true druggie, always easy, always affable. Hacine couldn’t stand him. Especially because the piece of shit acted all buddy-buddy, on the grounds that he had once known the Bouali cousins, the guys who first set up hash distribution in Heillange in the ’80s.
“Greetings, brother,” said Fred.
“We got nothing. Get lost.”
Everything happened the way it usually did. Fred would pretend not to hear, and Hacine became more and more monosyllabic. Then Fred began to beg: a hit, man, just one little hit. Insults started to fly. Eventually they became threats, and Fred agreed to leave, albeit slowly and miserably. His greatest fear was being sober. He hadn’t managed to do anything with his life: no job, no wife, no crime. Living with his mother, he endured in poverty. Fortunately, his mom required a whole pharmacy-ful of medications, so Fred would console himself there when he had nothing to smoke. The local doctors were accommodating. The whole valley was in palliative care, somewhere.
“Seems he’s got the virus, too,” said Eliott, watching Fred slink away.
“That’s bullshit.”
“He’s dying; you can tell.”
“Well, let the son of a bitch die.”
* * *
—
Around five, the bumper-car lady showed up with her mother, who ran the waffle stand. The two spent their time glued to their chairs, stuffing themselves with churros and candy. Oddly enough, the mother was as skinny as her daughter was fat. When they started the generator, the track lit up. Mom turned on her waffle irons and started the cotton candy. The smell of caramel spread through the courtyard. There was music.
For their part, the boys had gone home and now returned with shiny hair and smelling of body wash. Some had gone a
little overboard on the deodorant. They tried to look bored and blasé, but mainly they seemed excited. Finally, the girls arrived, two by two or in little groups. Eyes lowered, laughing to themselves, long dark hair, sidelong glances. They settled on the other side of the track, sitting on benches or leaning against the safety barrier. They came from other Heillange neighborhoods, or from Lameck or Étange; some even took the bus from Mondevaux. They were allowed to come because it was vacation time, and provided they didn’t get home too late. ZUP boys didn’t pick up girls in the neighborhood because they inevitably wound up being someone’s sister or daughter. But these visitors were fair game. Because of this tiny piece of county fair, they showed up every day. An opportunity not to be missed.
Hacine was the first to make his way to the cash register. He bought ten tokens for twenty francs. Behind the glass, the woman was already sweating. She recognized the song coming out of the loudspeakers and turned up the volume. It was a sappy Bryan Adams number, and her mother rolled her eyes. She had just started her first waffles and was fanning herself with a want-ads newspaper. The other boys were already lined up to get tokens. They were off and running.
When he’d spent his first ten tokens, Hacine bought ten more. He drove in circles for nearly two hours. His pals bumped into him, and vice versa. And during that time, all he did was think about the girl standing off to the side with a pair of girlfriends, the one with hoop earrings and a French manicure. She watched him, but each time he looked in her direction, she turned her head away. Every day, they hoped something would happen. It never did. He didn’t know her name, or anything. He hadn’t mentioned her to anyone. She left a little before eight o’clock. She never stayed very long.
Feeling disgusted, Hacine left the track and went back to the low wall where he spent his life. Eliott asked him what the problem was.
“Nothing. Just leave me the fuck alone.”
Plus, Saïd and Steve had managed to get girls into their bumper cars. Those losers. Hacine spat between his teeth. Little Kader looked over at him. That was exactly the wrong, stupid thing to do.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you looking at?”
“I told you, nothing.”
“Stop looking at me like that, you little prick.”
This went on for a while, and Kader eventually had to look down. Overhead, the sky was caught in the jaws outlined by the towers. The windows cut into their facades looked like narrow eyes and sick mouths. The sweet smell of waffles hung in the air and Freddy Mercury sang “I Want to Break Free.” After a while, Hacine split. Little Kader was pissed. He’d been chewed out for no reason at all.
“Man, I don’t know what’s up with him,” he said. “We were at a party yesterday, and he was already acting crazy.”
“How so?”
“I dunno, he kicked over a barbecue, called everybody sons of bitches.”
“Well, he’s right. They are sons of bitches.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
They laughed. Still, you had to wonder sometimes whether he wasn’t a little nuts.
* * *
—
Hacine roared down the ZUP hill flat-out, leaning forward on the Yamaha. He raced through downtown in third gear. The trick was to never hit the brakes. You just had to anticipate the turns and give her gas coming out of the curves. The little motor snarled angrily in the narrow streets. As he passed, people saw only a thin figure with two skinny arms sticking out of an extra-large T-shirt. From this sight, and the discomfort it caused, they immediately drew political conclusions. Inside Hacine’s chest, a seventeen-year-old heart was trapped in barbed wire. No way was he stopping for red lights. He couldn’t stand it anymore. At times, death seemed like an enviable fate.
He soon found himself on the departmental highway that ran all the way to Spain, and decided to stop near a field with enormous rolls of hay. He left the motorcycle and walked across the dry stubble. He strode quickly, his lip moist, bare arms swinging along his body. His tongue tasted like a copper coin. He made a dry rustling as he went, leaving a flattened furrow in his wake. He walked until he got tired then sat down in the shade of a hay roll. He took his Zippo lighter from his pocket and started to play with it, snapping it open with his thumb and lighting it on his jeans. The sun had faded and now shed a soft, enveloping light on the countryside. It was an old bronze-colored lighter, like they had in Vietnam. He’d taken it from some kid during the middle-school graduation exams. Every year, ninth-grade students from Hurlevent, a private school downtown, came to Louis-Armand to sit for the test. In their Benetton sweaters, the kids were something to see. Their parents would drop them off while glancing around nervously at the gray public buildings. It was like a train platform after a draft call-up. This republican tradition of holding the exam away from one’s home campus had been going on for a while. The very first sessions produced a variety of plunder and other compensatory vexations. But this low-grade class struggle no longer yielded much. The rich Hurlevent kids spread the word and now left their First Communion watches at home. The ZUP kids weren’t about to steal their Tann’s satchels. Last time, Hacine went after a group of longhairs in rock ’n’ roll T-shirts, which is how he acquired two guitar capos and the Zippo.
Its blue flame smelled pleasantly of lighter fluid, and he lit a piece of straw at his feet. It caught fire immediately. Despite the temptation, Hacine stamped it out with his heel. The copper-coin taste spread through his mouth. He felt acid in his chest and his mouth filled with saliva. He lit his lighter again. The hay roll caught fire in a great crackling of heat and a sigh of smoke. The flames rose, sharp and voluptuous. It smelled wonderful. He took a few steps backward, the better to see. Already the fire was spreading along the ground, seeking more to feed on. Hacine breathed deeply. He was starting to feel the amazing calm that came over him every time. He could finally go home. When he took off on the motorcycle, you’d think the whole valley behind him was in flames.
* * *
—
“Did you smoke again?” asked the old man.
Unable to find his keys, Hacine had had to ring the bell to get his father to open the door. The man stood there with his bare feet in slippers, dressed all in denim, his collar buttoned. The eyes in his wrinkled face were unreadable. His razor had missed a clump of white whiskers under his nose. He was less and less able to see that spot.
“No, I didn’t,” said Hacine. “Okay? Can I come in?”
“You smell of smoke. Are you smoking?”
“I told you, no!”
Frowning, the old man leaned over to sniff his son’s T-shirt. He grumbled, but stepped back to let him through. Once inside, Hacine took off his Nikes. The hissing of a pressure cooker came from the kitchen. It smelled of potatoes.
“Some people, they saw your brother,” said his father seriously.
His rough voice was low and beautiful. Words washed around in it like stones in a sieve.
“They’re dreaming.”
“They say they saw him.”
The boy turned to his father, whose pupils had taken an uncertain edge and opalescent color that normally indicated old age, though he was only fifty-nine.
“Why would they say that if they did not see him?”
“I don’t know. They got mixed up.”
“They told me he was there.”
“It’s nonsense, stop it,” moaned Hacine.
The man seemed dubious. He hadn’t seen his older son for a long time now. Hacine’s heart sank. He and his father were squeezed together in the narrow hallway. The wall had mirrors, old photos, things from over there. Their shoes were lined up on the floor.
“What are we eating?” asked Hacine.
“The usual. Come on.”
The father went back to his stove. He fried two chopped steaks and turned up the volume on the radio, whi
ch covered the sizzling of the meat. Then he cut the flame under the pressure cooker, and they sat down at the table. The father drank water; the son poured himself a glass of grenadine. It wasn’t night yet, but the temperature was already more bearable. You could smell coffee that had been kept hot all day. They ate with an elbow on the table, not speaking. Then the phone rang, and Hacine ran to the living room to answer. It was his mother. She was calling from over there. She said it was hot. She said she was happy to be seeing him soon. She asked if he was being good. Then his father took the receiver and talked with his wife for a few minutes in Arabic. Hacine shut himself in his bedroom so as not to bother them.
Later, his father came to get him.
“Did you go to City Hall?”
“Yeah.”
“There was work?”
Though he’d lived here for nearly thirty-five years, Hacine’s father still spoke this approximate French, even while acquiring the valley’s thick accent. Every time he opened his mouth, Hacine felt like hiding.
“Of course not. There wasn’t any job.”
“No job? She told me it was good.”
The old man entered the bedroom, to make sure.
“No,” said Hacine. “You didn’t understand. She’s just there to help people who’re looking for work. But they don’t have anything. They’re useless.”
“How so?”
“She helped me with my resume, that’s all. She’s useless, I tell you.”
“Oh, really?”
The father’s brows contracted in a frown, and he muttered something inaudible in Arabic. Under his mustache, the narrow movements of his brown lips were hard to see. Hacine asked him to repeat it.
“You have to work,” his father declared, with sudden solemnity.
“Yeah, but there has to be a job, too.”
“You find. If you want, you find,” said his father, totally convinced.
“Right. By the way, I’ll go shopping Monday morning. There’s nothing left in the fridge.”
And Their Children After Them Page 6