And Their Children After Them

by Nicolas Mathieu

  His mother had been waiting for them on the other side of the Mediterranean. She took Hacine in her arms. It was embarrassing at his age, especially since the entire family—the whole scary rogues’ gallery—was waiting a little off to the side. At first glance, Hacine found them ugly and dusty, looking as if they’d stepped out of the grave, right down to their wrinkles, their clothes, their misleading robustness, and the critical way they looked at him.

  After all these years, the house his father was having built still wasn’t finished. They visited the construction site. It looked ridiculous. Partly framed walls, pipe ends, steel rods sticking in the air. Every one of the construction people had an excuse: not enough time, not to mention the weather and the authorities. You always had to get an extra permit, pay an unexpected baksheesh. Bouali said nothing. It was his fault. He should have been there to supervise things. Even in France, you had to stay on top of workers, otherwise the delays went on and on. You could wait forever for the carpenter to keep his promises or for the plumber to show a sign of life. The roofless house stood like an accusation: Hacine’s father was living far from his wife. He was living like a bachelor.

  As a result, ten of them wound up all living in the apartment belonging to Hacine’s uncle. The place was hardly more finished: wires stuck out of the walls, and there were holes in the stairs. The water ran only intermittently, so the bathtubs were always kept full, just in case. One night, someone shouted, “It’s happening!” Pipes moaned and faucets began to sputter. The water started to run, at first in a thin, brown stream; then it cleared and became flowing and warm. The kids watched with delight, as if witnessing a miracle.

  * * *

  —

  Now, two years late, Hacine was going home to Heillange.

  * * *

  —

  Near Niort, he left the highway to get some coffee at a little Total gas station. It was past six o’clock in the evening and he’d been driving nonstop since the morning, without saying a word, scrupulously obeying the rules of the road. When the urge to piss got too strong, he relieved himself in a water bottle that was now rolling around on the carpeted passenger-side floor.

  He was going home alone, still young, with plenty of money in his pockets and his heart empty. His face had lost some of its early hesitancy. His upper lip no longer bore that shadow of mustache, and he now combed his hair straight back. He was wearing an expensive Armani shirt and white pants. His belt alone cost half a week’s pay at minimum wage.

  Hacine filled up with unleaded, threw his piss bottle away, and went to park in front of the café. Through the windows he could see a postcard display rack, shelves of magazines, coolers full of drinks and tasteless sandwiches. Two guys in uniform were busy behind the counter. The station door opened and a girl of about twenty came out. Blond, small breasts, denim shorts, espadrilles down at the heel. Her tangled hair looked like straw. She walked past the Volvo without a glance and went over to a Mercedes SUV.

  In his rearview mirror, Hacine saw the gas pumps, the yellow glare of artificial lights, trucks with their hydraulic wheezes, the ballet of cars with empty gas tanks, their weary drivers watching the liters and francs click by. The sky above the horizon was fading, cut by power lines. The red, orange, and blue Total sign reigned over everything.

  The SUV maneuvered to get back on the road. Its license plate began with the number 75. So she’s a Parisienne, he thought.

  He went into the station, sat down at the counter and ordered a coffee. One of the waiters in uniform asked if he wanted sugar.

  “Just coffee,” Hacine said.

  Each word cost him. The uniformed guy served him in silence.

  Over there, people sat on café terrasses in the evening chatting endlessly while sipping tiny cups of coffee. Hacine had spent wonderful hours like that with his uncles and cousins. The gas station coffee bore only a distant relationship to that bitter brew. He sniffed, and looked outside. He felt locked in, and blue. Standing up, he asked if they had a pay phone.

  “Over there,” said the counterman, pointing to a shadowy spot between the toilets and the vending machines.

  Hacine paid for his coffee—he’d only taken a sip—and went to the place indicated. He put five coins in the slot and dialed a complicated number. A hoarse voice answered him. He asked for news of his mother. Yes, he said, he was making good time. Everything was fine. He asked about his cats. The voice reassured him again. Hacine breathed calmly. The hoarse voice fell silent. He hung up and stood for a moment without moving. The feeling of emptiness no longer surprised him. He got back behind the wheel. He still had quite a ways to go.

  * * *

  —

  When his father left Tétouan to return to France, he told Hacine to look after his mother and to supervise the construction. He was counting on him. Hacine promised he would, though he would’ve preferred for his father to stay and take care of it himself.

  “And if you fuck up again, I will kill you with my own hands,” his father had said.

  The words were leaden, heavy, sincere—and empty. He had spoken them too often. When the police showed up at their apartment after the business with the motorcycle, for example, they behaved very properly. Sitting in his chair, Hacine’s father took on the stubborn, dignified look he always wore when dealing with the authorities, like the family welfare people. At one point, an officer asked to see his papers, and Bouali pulled out his big red folder held closed with rubber bands. It was all there, residency permits, naturalization papers, work contract, three decades of patiently accumulated documents. Fine, fine, said the cop.

  Before taking Hacine away, the police wanted to check the basement. They didn’t have anything on him except for a few bars of hashish and a knife hidden in his bed springs. They kept him at the police station for five hours. It was both long and efficient. Hacine didn’t say anything, not a word, and he walked out a free man. Next day, his father announced they were leaving for Tétouan.

  It was funny, when you thought of it. Men of Bouali’s generation had left Morocco because they couldn’t find work, and none of their problems could be solved there. Yet it had now become the promised land, the hallowed ground where evil was washed away after the corruption and bad luck in France. What bullshit…

  * * *

  —

  From then on, Hacine didn’t have a moment of free time. He and his old man did the stores, filled the car with big tricolor bags, and hit the road for the next two days. Halfway there, a few miles from Perpignan, they slept at a rest stop. Three or four hours of bad sleep, in their underwear, doors open, bath towels spread on the car seats. Hacine still remembered the passing semis shuttling between France and Spain, their dull roar, their headlights sweeping across the night. Exhausted tourists ordering coffee, briefly shivering in the air-conditioning, with their children, eyelids stuck shut, the teenagers reading basketball magazines; the Dream Team had won it all at the Barcelona Olympics and Michael Jordan was a demigod.

  At dawn, he had found his father in shorts and sandals, standing on a small rise and contemplating the flow of traffic.

  “We are going to get going,” he said in his gravelly, monotonous voice.

  His face looked drawn, and his stomach ballooned out under his sunken chest. The hair on his shoulders and back had turned white. He looked like a lunatic who had escaped from the hospital, or a retiree who’d lost his way. Hacine considered his father’s weakness, and said no.

  “I do not ask your opinion.”

  “I won’t go. There’s nothing for me over there.”

  The man turned to his son. The look on his face ended the debate. There was no weakness there.

  “The shame that I had, it is the last time. You will do as I say.”

  They barely exchanged two words during the nine hundred miles to Gibraltar. After the ferry crossing, they reached Ceuta and began the lengthy negotiation
s with Moroccan customs. Hacine stayed in the car, chewing over his resentment. It must have been 120 degrees. Thousands of cars, waves of people, everyone crowding close, standing up, yelling, holding out their passports. An atmosphere of exodus, of misery, of endless talking, all that shit.

  The rest had just been a matter of getting used to it. In particular he’d had to get used to the permanent presence of his uncles and cousins, even at night. And the heat. For weeks Hacine slept on the tile floor in his underpants, trying to keep cool while surrounded by snoring, men breathing, and an absorbing, sexual smell, a mix of dirty feet, cock, sweat, and food. The apartment was tiny. You had to share everything, every square foot, even the air.

  Hacine also had to endure his mother’s reproaches. She constantly yelled at him for being lazy, shifty, cunning, and a liar. She worried about what people in the neighborhood would say about him, and feared for her reputation. Fuck them, he thought. You will drive me crazy, she said. His mother wanted to hit him, but he was too big. Several times, he secretly went out to the stairwell to cry.

  Fortunately, there was the sea, its brutal blue neutrality, the beach, the languid waving of leaves, the burning air on his face. Fortunately, there was Ghizlane, his cousin.

  She was actually the daughter of a neighbor, but by introducing her as a cousin, they were telling him right away not to get his hopes up. From their very first meeting, they had eyes for each other. She was rounded and soft with amber eyes, full of malice and tricks, calculating and illiterate. Her hair had never seen scissors, and she was forever fiddling with those endless tresses. Depending on the day, she put her hair up in braids, cornrows, or chignons, or let it tumble down like a waterfall. Its wildness invaded everything. The moment she entered a room, it even got into your mouth. Afterward, you found hair on the carpets and the armchairs, along with a honeyed, animal, argan oil smell that would intoxicate you for hours. Hacine and Ghizlane didn’t speak together more than three times in all, but he wound up waiting for her. For a whole year, he dreamed of her rounded belly, the unbound breasts that her clothes never quite managed to hide. She secretly gave him a pair of striped kittens. And then, without any warning, from one day to the next, she married a teacher named Yazid. They left to go live in Fez.

  That was the latest in a number of disappointments, and it sent Hacine in pursuit of another passion. Since everything in life was bound to dissipate, escape you, and end in dust, he decided he would get rich. Profit alone seemed to have the power to keep death at a distance. Against life’s perpetual hemorrhaging, he was seized by a fury of acquisition. In Tétouan, there was only one way to make money, and he threw himself into it body and soul.

  * * *

  —

  Poitiers-Tours-Orléans…Before Hacine, Bouali had made the trip from Heillange to Gibraltar thirty times over his lifetime. Now it was his son’s turn to add to their complicated history with Morocco. Hacine had been sent there to expunge a sin, learn how to live, and become a man. He was coming back with forty-five kilos of cannabis resin.

  Hacine got lost near Troyes while looking for his rendezvous. He had to take the A6 heading south, then get back on the A5. This took him a good hour but caused no anxiety or impatience. He had all the time in the world. The Swedish station wagon cruised ponderously along, its enormous grill spangled with dead insects, the kind of car that could easily make you think life was eternal.

  It was almost night when he found the Plaines-Devant enterprise zone. He checked it out, driving slowly with the window open. The place gave off a feeling of elemental newness. Big, hastily erected warehouses stood next to faceless hotels. Franchise restaurants awaited the customers from a monster shopping center. There were also garden supply centers, two toy stores, a specialized frozen food store, a pair of hi-fi outlets. A road ran across the zone, linking roundabouts that gave access to the many parking lots. Strips of grass filled awkward transitions. Hacine drove slowly, mentally ticking off the reassuring names on the signs: Saint-Maclou, Darty, Carglass, Kiabi, Intersport. In the evening’s unusual silence, the deserted stores took on a dramatic quality, looking like a lovely sepulcher. The sky in its infinity lay over it all. Hacine smoked a Winston filter while listening to “The Girl from Ipanema” on the radio. You don’t often get to savor moments like that.

  He eventually reached the Carrefour shopping center’s lot, which was as vast as a plain. The last customers emerged from the automatic doors with their full carts. Hacine stopped the station wagon a good distance away. The air was warm, and the noise from the nearby highway made a pleasant hum. All in all, he felt a bit weary, soothed, not too bad. A couple in a Fiat Panda cut diagonally across the parking lot. Over there, a café was still open. People, banquettes, and the orange globes of old plastic lampshades could be seen through windows streaked with white reflections. The sun was setting behind the shopping center. A mercantile sadness rose from the earth.

  As Hacine entered the store, a security guard urged him to hurry; it was almost closing time. He went to the garden supply section, where he selected a pickax and a handsaw. In the empty aisles, his soles made a little repeated squeaking. Background classical music lulled shoppers who were running late. There were only two registers still open. When he paid, he spoke to the cashier politely.

  Once outside, he found there was nothing left to see. Night had fallen, and the endless plain was studded with luminous dots, each streetlight a warm spark in the indigo evening. The red and yellow lights of cars marked slow migrations. The bright green and shiny blue of the neon signs glistened like frost. Advertisements glowed with flat, dull light. This swarm of lights gave a vague sense of mankind’s fate and the emptiness of life. Hacine wedged his pickax against the Volvo’s rear bumper and sawed the handle off below the head. He stowed the saw in the trunk and laid the ax handle on the passenger seat. His appointment was here at eight the next morning, a Sunday. He had time. He was hungry.

  Hacine pulled into the drive-in and ordered McNuggets, large fries, and a Coke, which he ate in his car while listening to the ten o’clock news. The talk was about Hamas, Balladur, and Yann Piat. And soccer, of course. In the day’s quarterfinals, Italy was playing Spain, and Brazil playing Holland. Like everybody, Hacine liked Brazil.

  He found himself a room in a hotel with automated check-in. Before going to bed, he considered bringing the dope in but decided it was just as safe in the trunk, and he couldn’t see himself traipsing back and forth. His room had its own toilet, but the showers were down the hall. He took his ax handle along when he went; he needed to get comfortable with it. A truck driver who was brushing his teeth watched him pass in the mirror without saying anything. The water was very hot, and Hacine enjoyed it for a long time. After that, he smoked a joint and fell asleep in front of the TV.

  When he woke up, he didn’t remember having dreamed. Dope did that to you. For years, Hacine thought he had stopped dreaming.

  * * *

  —

  He’d been waiting in front of the Carrefour shopping center for ten minutes when a white utility van appeared at the far end of the lot. It was still early, and the Volvo was parked alone in the middle of the lot. The enterprise zones were deserted on Sunday, and the same emptiness reigned for miles around. The van drove in a big curve before pulling up right next to him. The driver was a short, standard-issue North African with a light-colored jacket and aviator glasses. He looked Hacine over and asked:

  “So, you’re the one?”

  “What’s inside there?” asked Hacine, pointing at the back of the van.

  “Nothing.”

  They briefly sized each other up. The little Arab had spotted the ax handle on the passenger seat. His car radio was playing trashy, very up-tempo techno, and he was chewing gum at an alarming rate, his mouth open. Right away, you could tell he fancied himself one of those cool hipsters you saw in Ibiza. Hacine gestured for him to turn the volume down so they could hear ea
ch other.

  “You’re awfully young,” said the guy.

  “So what?”

  “I dunno. I didn’t picture you like this.”

  He didn’t ask what sorts of things the guy had been told. He could easily imagine. Hacine had surprised quite a few people in Tétouan and Algésiras and on the A9. He’d even held a record for a while: Gérone to Lyon in under three hours with five hundred kilos of merchandise in the trunk. To do that, you needed an Audi S2 and couldn’t value your life too highly.

  The guy continued to study him incredulously. Hacine said:

  “Well?”

  “We’ll go park a little farther on. No point in doing it right out in the open.”

  The van took off slowly, and Hacine followed. They drove for a while through the deserted enterprise zone. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Everything was closed. At each roundabout, they had to slow down. The minutes dragged on, and Hacine began to get tense. He briefly took hold of the ax handle. It fit his hand well. He had plans for it. Soon the van signaled a right turn, and they stopped behind a Halle aux Vêtements department store. The place was out of eyesight, with just enough room for their two vehicles between shipping containers and a stack of empty cartons. The guy jumped out of his van, leaving the engine running. Hacine backed in so the vehicles were back to back, and opened the rear door. Using screwdrivers, the two men started removing the Volvo’s trim and the floor of the trunk.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Hacine.”

  “I’m Bibi.”

  They both knew the drill, and they worked fast. Still, Hacine said he didn’t much like being there.