‘Need help?’ she asked.
‘Nah, I’m ‘right. Got all you want?’
‘Just let me get a couple more.’
‘Be quick. They’ll be here arresting everybody in sight in a minute.’
Nicolette nodded. Looked around for another shot. Faces, sounds, shadows. The crackling of the fire, the stench of smoke. A dead chicken at her feet. Against a wall a small blue clump, something about it familiar.
The girl lay face up on the ground, eyes staring sightlessly at the sky. In her hand she still held the apple, whole except for one small bite taken out of it, the flesh of the fruit indecently white against the red of the skin. Covering her was the boy in the blue t-shirt. From one end poked two skinny bird-like legs, at the other a mangle of dark hair, bone and raw flesh where his face had been. Nicolette wanted to vomit. If you can’t handle that, you shouldn’t be here. She raised her camera to her eye, looked through the viewfinder and zoomed in. The jaws of a great white shark filled her lens, and in the centre a dark patch spread until it reached the teeth, turning them red. Her finger hesitated over the shutter. Her hand shook. The patch continued to spread. She pressed the shutter.
Shrill whistles and the pounding of boots. Soldiers pushing through the crowd. The square emptied. Steven and Jean-Paul ran towards her.
‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’
Past the café into a side street. Nicolette turned to get one last shot.
‘Fuck, woman, now!’
Steven grabbed her arm and pulled her along. They ran, blood pounding to the beat of their feet. Another turn into an alley. They stopped. Listened. From the square came raised voices, whistles. The reverberation of a gunshot. A woman hurried into the alley, saw them and retraced her steps. The wail of a fire truck’s siren, louder and louder.
‘Safe now, I think.’
As one, they sat on a threshold. Steven lit a cigarette.
‘Can I’ve one of those?’
‘You don’t smoke.’
Nicolette shrugged, took a cigarette and lit it. Coughed.
‘You okay?’
She nodded. Sweat soaked the back of her shirt but she shivered in adrenaline withdrawal. ‘Where’s DJ?’
Steven pulled a sliver of glass from his hand. ‘Don’t know. He’ll turn up.’ He sucked on the wound. Spat. ‘I need a drink,’ he said, standing up.
Jean-Paul nodded. ‘Come on, Nicky. Do you good.’
‘Gotta get my films done.’
‘You’re in no shape to develop film,’ Steven said. ‘Look at you – pale as a ghost and still shaking. Give them to me – I know one of the guys, I’ll get him to do them for you straight away.’
Nicolette hesitated for an instant, but Steven was right. She couldn’t even think right now, let alone mess with chemicals. She’d end up ruining the rolls. She rewound her film, scratched on the content then gave it – and the one of the Barbary macaques – to Steven.
‘Let’s go. You need a couple of stiff drinks.’
‘Later. I want to walk for a bit.’
‘Be careful then.’
She nodded and watched them go. They’d be drunk within the hour, would continue drinking half the night, and still show up fresh and alert early tomorrow. Nothing seemed to affect them. She thought of the scenes she had captured on film today and knew they would become part of her nightmares. She wished she could be like Steven and DJ and Jean-Paul.
#
She had been walking for a while now. The old French quarter was well behind her, the sun no longer visible behind the thick grey clouds that had gathered. On her right was the Bay of Algiers. Her legs ached from the uphill climb, and her camera bag banging against her hip was probably bruising her, but still she pushed herself, trying to forget the pictures she’d taken. Outstretched fingers grasping at life. Click. Boys not yet old enough to shave but with assault rifles casually slung on their shoulders emptying the pockets of the dead. Click. An old man collapsing in grief over the body of his daughter. Click. Private moments for public viewing.
Up ahead the Casbah spread up the Sahel Hills. Her friends in Australia would see it as a whitewashed place of mystery and romance, but she knew it for what it had become – a pock-marked, decaying rabbit warren of dark alleys and courtyards leading nowhere. Crooked narrow streets lined with flat-roofed houses built on cedar struts, with walnut grillages that hid eyes peering out. Moorish bath-houses and the street of the courtesans. Feral cats and restaurants. And everywhere, swarming and arguing, playing checkers and drinking coffee, men in burnouses. Red fezzes. Turbans wound with camel-hair cord. Rubbish filling the streets. Skinny dogs and skinnier children. Women buying meat and silver jewellery, silks and vegetables from souk owners sitting cross-legged in their holes-in-the-walls. Noise and flies and stench.
She had loved it so when, as a very small girl, she had gone there with her grandfather. For a moment she was tempted to enter it once more, wanting to believe that she could still walk the alleyways in safety. She knew better, but just for a moment she wanted to forget about being careful, being wise, being professional. Just for a moment. A blue t-shirt with the jaws of a shark soaking up blood. A small hand clutching a just bitten apple. She walked on.
#
The gilded cupola of the Basilica of Notre Dame d’Afrique shone white in this light, the rich blue tiles decorating its tower a sharp contrast to the grey of the sky. This great church of Moorish and Byzantine architecture, perched high on a promontory, had welcomed wandering pieds noirs back to Algiers for generations, as it now welcomed Nicolette. It was the last Christian church in Algiers; all the others were now mosques. Bay trees and eucalypt covered the hills running down to the port, and the oils of their leaves gave the air surrounding the church an illusion of therapeutic cleanliness, as if breathing it would heal the torments of those who still came.
Nicolette entered and, more out of long forgotten habit than faith, dipped two fingers in the holy water of the font and crossed herself. The church was empty except for a sexton busy by the high altar. Long tapered candles burnt around the statue of the black Virgin, illuminating her crown and opulent blue dress with its golden embroidery. She stood, with tilted face smiling and hands tended in welcome, before the apse where, in large capitals, were the words: NOTRE DAME D’AFRIQUE PRIEZ POUR NOUS ET LES MUSULMANS.
Nicolette considered those words – pray for us and the Muslims. Maybe that’s why it was still a Christian church.
It was much colder here. Dark but peaceful. The air smelt of burnt wax, prayers and flowers. Nicolette leaned back into her pew and absorbed the silence. She didn’t pray. Hadn’t prayed for a long time. But she still liked to sit in a church, and just be.
There had been a time in Constantine when she had truly believed in the power of prayer. But that was a long, long time ago. Before Willow. Before Australia. Before everything went wrong.
The little church in Constantine had been no more than two rows of pews and a modest altar, but she had loved going there, when faith had been such a simple thing. She’d made her First Communion there. There was a photo of her – a solemn little girl with blonde curls tied back off her face, wearing a white broderie anglaise dress with a full skirt and pearl buttons all down the front, and a short white veil, standing so straight staring at the camera. She’d believed in Baby Jesus and in God, and that good people went to Heaven and bad people to Hell. But that was then. Children didn’t stay so naive for long in Algeria. The snipers and the bombings and the bodies, and the schoolmates who were at school one day then absent the next – never to be seen again – soon awakened reality. And with reality came doubt, and cynicism, and lessons no child should ever have to learn.
Nicolette stared at the flames of the candles. She remembered the last time she’d prayed. Remembered a little girl running through the streets of Constantine, covered in blood. Running until she’d reached the church. She had knelt at the feet of the Virgin and prayed. Begged. Make it stop. Make it stop. Ple
ase, Our Lady, make it stop. She had whispered this litany over and over and over, not daring to stop, even when her knees hurt from kneeling so long, because stopping brought forth the sight of that creature that had stumbled into her, clawing at her, his burnoose soaking up his blood, his eyes above the Mask of Death begging for something she had no power to give. Make it stop, and the Virgin had looked down at little Nicolette and smiled, but had not been able to make it stop. The vigil candles at her feet had flickered, and for an instant it seemed as if she too had worn the Mask.
Nicolette shut her eyes, and again saw the man’s face. The hair, the broad forehead, the eyes. Then, though she fought not to think of it, the grotesque fleshless clown’s smile. Bits of cartilage where the nose had been, bare teeth and bone and gums no longer covered by skin, blood streaming down from the face. The Mask of Death – the one solid piece of flesh cut from the victim’s face, encompassing the whole area from the nose to the ears and down to include the mouth. No surgical procedure, this, and often – maybe because of the victim’s struggles, maybe intentionally – the knife would also slit the neck, so that the blood bubbled as it flowed over a slashed trachea.
She had begged the Madonna but the Madonna had not helped. The Mask of Death, a gruesome piece of flesh nailed to someone’s door – a fly-covered testimony to the victim’s alleged traitorism. There it would stay for days until someone dared take it down, and by then the victim would be dead. From shock, from loss of blood, from infection, no one cared. Traitors were better off dead.
The sexton dropped a hymnbook and Nicolette started. Since being back in Algiers all sorts of memories were surfacing, memories she had buried long ago beneath the excitement of a new country, a new language, a new life. The Algeria she remembered until a week ago was not the Algeria that was resurfacing now.
She thought of the old priest that had found her, and remembered his shock when he saw the blood covering her clothes. At first he’d thought her injured, and had wanted to get help, but when it became clear that it was not she who bled, he’d comforted her instead and convinced her to tell him what had happened.
He’d been sympathetic, at first. Taken her hands in his and listened intently, murmuring words of concern as she spoke. His kind gentle face covered in wrinkles had reassured her, but this very kindness had also threatened to demolish the fragile hold she’d had on her emotions.
Nicolette breathed deep and looked around the church. Noticed the choir loft. Music. There had been music in that other church. Gouneau’s Ave Maria. From the choir loft someone had begun to play and the music of the organ had been joined by the pure voice of a boy. She shook her head, trying not to remember. Maybe she should go find Steven. Or go back to Madame Lesage’s – soak in a hot bath, relax. But the old priest refused to leave her thoughts.
He’d truly thought he was doing the right thing when he’d told her to trust in God. And she’d wanted to believe him, wanted to believe that she need only trust and everything would be alright. But then the old priest had told her that God would punish the FLN, would punish all the Muslims, because they were worse than demons, and that was when he’d lost her. Nicolette may have been only a child, but she knew that Jamilah and Rafiq were no demons.
She wondered what had happened to that old priest. She understood now that his faith had been his refuge – maybe she had understood that even then. She remembered asking the priest if God would also punish the French for the atrocities they practiced, but the old man had not wanted to hear that, and had suggested she join him in prayer instead, to ask God to forgive her for such thoughts.
Nicolette had looked at the priest and recognised the fear in his eyes, and though only a child she had understood. Matured in an instant. She had taken his hand in hers, and like a mother with a small boy, patted the gnarled fingers. It’s all right, Father, it will be all right. Then she’d walked out of the church.
Nicolette shivered and looked around the Basilica. This church was so different from the little church in Constantine, but the atmosphere was the same. Maybe she should give up churches for a while. She thought of Steven and Jean-Paul. Right now, getting drunk seemed like a very good idea.
15
Louis kicked his kitbag further under his seat, rolled a cigarette and stared out of the train window. He’d been in France since the Battle of the Marne, just over a year ago, and now they were bound for Paris, then ‘somewhere up north’. They called this the Great War, but to Louis, the only thing great about this war was the number of men it killed. He was thirty-one years old but felt like an old man. Around him French, English and Italian soldiers slept and sang and wrote letters home. Snowflakes drifted down, swirled and melted before they touched the ground. It was nearly Christmas. When the war had first started everyone’d said it would be over by that Christmas, but it had come and gone, and now it was nearly Christmas again and still the war continued. Louis looked out of the train window and forced himself to stop thinking about the war, and think of Therèse instead.
She was always like a child at Christmas time, more excited even than their boys. For weeks beforehand she would prepare special treats for them all, even for the children of her school. She would make pâtés and biscuits and sweetmeats, and the shelves of the pantry would groan under the weight of earthenware pots filled with her mixtures of meat and spices and herbs, topped off with a layer of rendered fat to seal them from the air. There would be boxes of Christmas biscuits made with ground almonds instead of flour, which she’d dust with finely powdered sugar, then layer between sheets of brown paper that she’d waxed with melted candles. And there were huge glass jars crammed with curls of orange peel onto which she’d pour white wine and sugar, then leave to infuse for at least a month before adding a little rum, so as to make the traditional orange wine they drank on Christmas Eve.
Her enthusiasm even infected Imez, who would shake his head in wonder at these preparations to celebrate the birth of a man who was, after all, just a prophet. But each year he would nevertheless make the three-day trip to a place he refused to make known, just to bring back for her long clusters of dates that he called khaleseh, which he insisted were the most fragrant in all of Africa. These she would stone and stuff with an almond paste coloured the palest of green with a few drops of spinach juice, then store in wooden boxes between more sheets of waxed paper. And often Imez would bring Bahac, and the two women would sit at the table to gossip and giggle like schoolgirls as they worked.
Louis pulled his coat closer around himself and wondered how many more Christmases they would all spend away from their families. Some of those around him looked like they should still be under their mothers’ care, still be in short pants, until you looked into their eyes and saw there the indelible mark of violence that distinguished all those who’d experienced war.
The train pulled into a station where, on the platform, a hodgepodge of soldiers swarmed. Long files of those starting their furloughs, the mud of the trenches still clinging to the bottom of their coats. New recruits yet to see action, trying to look like men but not quite succeeding, their helmets smooth and shining in an aching contrast to those of the men going on leave. Babies all. And pushing their way through the crowds, two young women in the uniform and blue cape of the Red Cross, shaking donation tins and pinning little aluminium medals attached to tri-coloured bows on the chests of those who donated. For the wounded, they called as they raised their tins to those still in the train, for the wounded if you please. He dropped a coin into one of the tins and followed his platoon out of the station, for the long march into the capital.
#
Louis walked along the quay, where a sense of security and purposeful activity filled the air. The frivolity he had been led to expect of Paris was missing – like a beautiful coquette who will not hesitate, when alone, to slither out of her fineries and wrap herself in a comfortable housecoat that revealed her plebeian origins, so Paris, deprived of its tourists, had exchanged its artificiality for Gallic
practicality. Over the Seine to the Left Bank, he headed west past an old knife grinder, bent and gnarled, hawking his trade. Paris had become a city of children, women and old men, and Louis wondered what Therèse would think of this Paris; she’d been here with her parents when still a young girl, and had so loved this city.
He walked on towards his billet, past a pissoir whose iron walls were embossed with a pattern of fleur-de-lis, past a menagerie of signs above shops and doorways. Dominating the skyline was the Eiffel Tower, that controversial ‘solitary suppository’ whose demolition had only been halted when it was found to provide the best aerial for the new scientific wireless telegraphy, and whose reprieve had become absolute when its station picked up plans of a German attack on Paris.
The sky darkened, the air became colder. By nine o’clock the whole city would be asleep, all except for the searchlight on the Tower that would slash the sky like a silver sword, in search of German nighthawks. Louis stopped at a kiosk selling newspapers. It had a shoebox filled with postcards on the counter, and he bought a handful to send to Gustave. If he hurried he would have time to write to Marius before dinner, and maybe even to Imez, now a brancardier – or stretcher-bearer – somewhere on the Front. Then after dinner he’d write a long letter to Therèse. His platoon was leaving in the morning, and he wanted to make sure there was a letter on its way to her before then.
#
They were moving out. Phillip Petin, the newly promoted commander-in chief of the Verdun front, had ordered his lines to be defended at all costs. The sudden, massive bombardment of the area had allowed the Germans to advance further into France; Petin’s job was to stop this advance, and under his command there would be no more withdrawals. The convoys of trucks on the great road from Bar-le-Duc to Verdun rolled on, like ants on an anthill. Rising, falling, crawling through bleak storm-swept moors. Day and night, never stopping. A slow procession feeding the inferno that was Verdun.
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