“Look!”
Radicz opens his eyes wide, but he doesn’t ask any questions. Maybe he thinks Lalla stole the money, or worse yet.
Lalla puts the bills back into her coat pocket. That’s all that is left of the days she spent in the darkness of the hotel, scrubbing the linoleum with the couch-grass brush, sweeping the gray rooms that smell of sweat and tobacco. When she told the owner of the hotel she was leaving, he didn’t say anything either. He got out of his old bed, which was never made, and walked over to the safe at the back of his room. He took out the money, counted it, added a week’s advance, and gave it all to Lalla; then he went and lay back down again without saying anything else. He did all of that in a very leisurely fashion, in his pajamas, with his unshaven cheeks, and his dirty hair; then he went back to reading his newspaper again, as if nothing else were of any importance.
So now Lalla is drunk with freedom. She looks around, at the walls, the windows, the automobiles, the people, as if they were nothing but shapes, images, ghosts that the wind and the light would sweep away.
Radicz looks so unhappy that Lalla feels sorry for him.
“Come on!” She takes the boy by the hand, pulling him through the swirling crowd. Together they go into a very big store with bright light, not the beautiful light of the sun, but a harsh white glow, reflected in the profusion of mirrors. But that glare is also inebriating; it numbs and blinds you. With Radicz stumbling slightly behind her, Lalla goes through the perfume department, through cosmetics, wigs, and soaps; she stops almost everywhere, buys several different colored bars of soap that she has Radicz smell, then small bottles of perfume that she breathes in briefly as she walks along the aisles, and it makes her feel dizzy, almost nauseated. Red lipsticks, green eye shadow, black, ochre, foundation, brilliantine, creams, false eyelashes, false hair extensions – Lalla asks to be shown it all, and she shows it to Radicz, who doesn’t say anything; then she takes a long time choosing a little square bottle of brick-colored nail polish and a tube of bright red lipstick. She’s sitting on a tall stool, in front of a mirror, and trying out the colors on the back of her hand, while the salesgirl with strawlike hair gazes at her stupidly.
On the first floor, Lalla weaves through the clothing, still holding Radicz by the hand. She picks out a T-shirt, some blue denim work overalls, some canvas sandals, and red socks. She leaves her old, gray smock-dress and rubber sandals behind in the dressing room, but she holds on to the brown coat because she likes it. Now she walks more buoyantly, bouncing on the springy soles of the sandals, one hand in the pocket of her overalls. Her black hair falls in heavy curls on the collar of her coat, gleaming in the white electric light.
Radicz looks at her and thinks she’s beautiful, but he doesn’t dare tell her so. Her eyes are sparkling with joy. There’s something like a fiery glow to Lalla’s black hair and red copper face. Now it seems as if the electric light has brought the color of the desert sun back to life, as if she had stepped directly from the path out on the plateau of stones into the Prisunic store.
Maybe everything really has disappeared and the big store is standing alone in the midst of the boundless desert, just like a fortress of stone and mud. Yet it is the entire city that is surrounded by the sand, held tightly in its grips, and you can hear the superstructures of the concrete buildings snapping while cracks run up the walls and the plate glass mirrors of skyscrapers fall to the ground.
Lalla holds the burning force of the desert in her eyes. The light blazes on her black hair, on the thick tress she’s braiding in the hollow of her collarbone as she walks along. The light blazes in her amber-colored eyes, on her skin, on her high cheekbones, on her lips. And so, in the big store full of noise and white electricity, people step aside, stop as Lalla and Radicz the beggar go by. The women, the men stop, surprised, because they’ve never seen anyone like them. Lalla strides along in the middle of the aisle, wearing her dark overalls, her brown coat which opens to show her throat and her copper-colored face. She isn’t tall, and yet she seems huge as she moves down the center of the aisle and goes down the escalator to the ground floor.
It’s because of all the light streaming from her eyes, her skin, her hair, the almost supernatural light. Behind her comes the strange, skinny boy, in his men’s clothing, barefoot in his black leather shoes. His long black hair frames his hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed triangular face. He tags behind silently, not moving his arms, walking a little bit sideways, the way cowering dogs do. People also look at him in surprise, as if he were a shadow detached from a body. Fear is visible on his face, but he tries to hide it with an odd smirking smile that looks more like a grimace.
At times, Lalla turns around, gives him a little wave, or takes his hand, “Come on!”
But the boy quickly lets himself fall behind. When they are outside again in the street, in the sun and the wind, Lalla asks him, “Are you hungry?”
Radicz looks at her with shiny feverish eyes.
“We’re going to eat now,” says Lalla. She shows him what’s left of the handful of rumpled bills in the pocket of her new overalls.
Along the wide straight avenues, people are walking, some hurriedly, others slowly, dragging their feet. The automobiles are still driving along near the sidewalks, as if they were on the lookout for something or someone, a place to park. There are swifts up in the cloudless sky; they swoop down the valleys of the streets giving shrill cries. Lalla is happy to be walking like that, holding Radicz’s hand, not saying anything, as if they were going off to the other side of the world and never coming back. She thinks about the lands across the sea, the red and yellow soil, the black rocks standing up tall in the sand like teeth. She thinks of the eyes of fresh water open on the sky, and of the taste of the chergui, which lifts up the thin skin of dust and makes the dunes move forward. She thinks of the Hartani’s cave again, up on top of the cliff, the place where she’d seen the sky, nothing but the sky. Now it was as if she were walking toward that land, along the avenues, as if she were going back. People step aside to let them pass, eyes squinting in the light, not understanding. She moves past them without seeing them, as if through a crowd of shadows. Lalla isn’t talking. She’s squeezing Radicz’s hand very tightly, walking straight ahead, toward the sun.
When they reach the sea, the wind is blowing even harder, heaving against them. The automobiles are honking aggressively, caught in the traffic jams around the harbor. Once again fear is visible on Radicz’s face, and Lalla holds his hand firmly, to reassure him. She mustn’t hesitate; if she does, the giddiness of the wind and the light will go away, leaving them on their own, and they won’t be brave enough to be free.
They walk down the wharves not looking at the ships with hollow clanking masts. The reflections of the water dance on Lalla’s cheek, setting her copper-colored skin, her hair aglow. The light around her is red, the red of burning embers. The boy looks at her, allows the heat emanating from Lalla to enter him, make him light-headed. His heart is pounding heavily, pulsing in his temples, in his neck.
Now the high white walls, the plate glass windows of the fine restaurant appear. That’s where she wants to go. Over the door, colored flags are snapping in the wind on their masts. Lalla knows this place well; she’s been noticing it from afar for quite some time now, very white, with its plate glass windows shooting off flashes in the setting sun.
She goes in without hesitating, pushing open the glass door. The large dining room is dark, but on the round tables, the cloths make dazzling splashes. Lalla sees everything in a glance, very clearly: the bouquets of pink flowers in the crystal vases, the silver utensils, the cut-glass goblets, the immaculate napkins, and the chairs covered with dark blue velvet, the waxed hardwood floor over which the waiters dressed in white slip by. It is unreal and remote, and yet this is the place she has come into, walking slowly, silently, over the parquet, and holding Radicz the beggar’s hand very tightly.
“Come on,” says Lalla. “We’re going to sit over there.”
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She points out a table, near a plate glass window. They cross the dining room. Men and women sitting at the round tables lift their heads from their plates and stop chewing, stop talking. The waiters are stopped short, the spoon sunk into the dish of rice, or the bottle of white wine slightly tilted, pouring into the glass a very fine trickle of wine tailing off at the end like a flame going out. Then Lalla and Radicz sit down at the round table, on either side of the lovely white tablecloth, separated by a bouquet of roses. So the people start chewing, talking again, but in lower voices, and the wine starts pouring again, the spoon serves the rice, and the voices whisper a little, drowned out by the commotion of the automobiles passing in front of the large plate glass windows like monstrous fish in an aquarium.
Radicz doesn’t dare look around. He’s keeping his eyes trained solely on Lalla’s face with all of his might. He has never seen a more beautiful, more luminous face. The light from the window shines on her heavy black hair, making a flame around Lalla’s face, on her neck, on her shoulders, all the way down to her hands laying flat on the white tablecloth. Lalla’s eyes are like two pieces of flint, the color of metal and fire, and her face is like a smooth copper mask.
A tall man is standing in front of their table. He’s dressed in a black suit, and his shirt is as white as the tablecloths. He has a large, bored, flabby face, with a lipless mouth. He is precisely just about to open that mouth of his and tell the children to leave immediately, without making a scene, when his sad eyes meet those of Lalla, and he suddenly forgets what he was going to say. Lalla’s stare is as hard as flint, filled with such strength that the man in black has to look away. He takes a step backward, as if he were going to leave, but then says, in a funny, slightly strangled voice, “Would ... would you like something to drink?”
Lalla is still staring at him unblinkingly.
“We’re hungry,” she simply says. “Bring us something to eat.”
The man in black walks away and comes back with the menu, which he lays on the table. But Lalla hands the piece of cardboard back and keeps her eyes trained on his. Perhaps later he’ll remember his hatred and be ashamed of his fear.
“Bring us the same thing as they’re having,” Lalla orders. She motions to the group of people at the next table, the ones who are peering at them over their eyeglasses every now and again, turning halfway around in their seats.
The man goes and says something to one of the waiters, who comes up pushing a small cart loaded with dishes of all different colors. On the plates, the waiter places tomatoes, lettuce leaves, filets of anchovies, olives and capers, cold potatoes, eggs in a yellow powder, and still many more things. Lalla watches Radicz eating quickly, leaning over his plate like a dog gnawing at a bone, and she feels like laughing.
The light and the wind are still dancing for her, even here, on the glasses and the plates, in the mirrors on the walls, on the bouquets of flowers. The dishes are brought to the table one after the other, huge, flamboyant, filled with all sorts of delicacies with which Lalla isn’t familiar: fish swimming in orange sauces, mounds of vegetables, plates full of red, green, brown, covered with silver domes, which Radicz lifts to sniff at the smells. The maître d’hôtel ceremoniously pours them an amber-colored wine, then in another wide, very fragile glass, a ruby-colored, almost black wine. Lalla dips her lips into the drink, but it is rather the color that she drinks, looking at it against the light. They are more inebriated with the light and the colors and smells of the food than with the wine. Radicz eats rapidly, everything at the same time, and he drinks the glasses of wine one after the other. But Lalla hardly eats anything; she just watches the boy eating, and the other people in the room, who seem to be frozen in front of their plates. Time has slowed down, or maybe it’s her gaze, coupled with the light, that is immobilizing everything. Outside, the automobiles continue to drive past the windows, and you can glimpse the gray color of the sea between the boats.
When Radicz has finished eating everything in the dishes, he wipes his mouth with the napkin and leans back in the chair. He’s a little red, and his eyes are very bright.
“Was it good?” asks Lalla.
“Yes,” Radicz simply says. He’s eaten so much that he’s hiccupping a little. Lalla has him drink a glass of water and tells him to look her in the eye until his hiccups go away.
The big man in black comes over to their table.
“Coffee?”
Lalla shakes her head. When the maître d’hôtel brings the bill on a tray, Lalla holds it out to him.
“Read it.”
She takes the wad of wrinkled bills out of her coat pocket and unfolds them one after the other on the tablecloth. The maître d’hôtel takes the money. He starts to walk away and then changes his mind.
“There is a man who would like to speak with you over there, at the table near the door.”
Radicz takes hold of Lalla’s arm, gives her a hard jerk.
“Come on, let’s get out of this place!”
As she nears the door, Lalla sees a man around thirty with somewhat of a sad look about him sitting at a neighboring table. He stands and walks up to her. He stammers.
“I, excuse me for accosting you like this, but I – ”
Lalla looks straight at him, smiling.
“You see, I’m a photographer, and I’d like to take some pictures of you, whenever you like.”
Since Lalla doesn’t answer, and keeps smiling, he gets more and more muddled.
“It’s because – I saw you over there a little while ago, when you walked into the restaurant and it was – it was extraordinary, you are – it was really extraordinary.”
He takes a ballpoint pen out of his suit jacket and quickly scribbles his name and address on a scrap of paper. But Lalla shakes her head and doesn’t take the paper.
“I don’t know how to read,” she says.
“Then tell me where you live?” asks the photographer. He has very sad gray-blue eyes, very watery like those of dogs. Lalla looks at him with her eyes filled with light, and the man tries to think of something else to say.
“I live at the Hotel Sainte-Blanche,” says Lalla. And goes out hurriedly.
Outside, Radicz the beggar is waiting for her. The wind is blowing his long hair over his thin face. He doesn’t look happy. When Lalla talks to him he shrugs his shoulders.
Together, they walk till they reach the sea, not knowing where they are going. Here, the sea isn’t the same as at Naman the fisherman’s beach. It’s a big cement wall that runs along the coast, clinging to the gray rocks. The short waves come crashing into the hollows of the rocks, making explosions; the foam rises up like mist. But it’s great, Lalla loves to pass her tongue over her lips and taste the salt. She and Radicz climb down amongst the rocks till they get to a deep recess sheltered from the wind. The sun burns down very hot there; it sparkles out on the open sea and on the salty rocks. After the noise of the city, and after all those odd smells in the restaurant, it’s good to be out here, with nothing before you but the sea and the sky. Slightly westward, there are some small islands, a few black rocks sticking up out of the sea like whales – that’s what Radicz says. There are also some small boats with big white sails, and they look like children’s toys.
When the sun starts going down in the sky, and the light is growing softer on the waves, on the rocks, and the wind is also blowing more gently, it makes you want to dream, to talk. Lalla is looking at the tiny succulent plants that smell of honey and pepper; they quiver at each gust of wind in the hollows of the gray rocks, facing the sea. She thinks she would like to become so small she could live in a grove of those little plants; then she would live in a hole in a rock, and she would have enough to drink for a whole day with just a single drop of water, and a single crumb of bread would be enough for her to eat for two whole days.
Radicz pulls a slightly crumpled pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his brown suit jacket and gives one to Lalla. He says he never smokes in front of others,
only when he’s in a place he really likes. He says that Lalla is the first person he’s ever smoked in front of. They’re American cigarettes that have a piece of cardboard and cotton at one end, and they have a nauseating smell of honey. They both smoke slowly, looking out at the sea before them. The wind whisks the blue smoke away.
“You want me to tell you about the place I live in, over by the storage tanks?”
Radicz’s voice is all different now, a little hoarse, as if emotion were making a lump in his throat. He talks without looking at Lalla, smoking the cigarette down until it burns his lips and fingertips.
“I didn’t use to live with the boss before, you know. I lived with my father and mother in a trailer, we went from one fair to the next, we had a shooting stand, I mean, not with rifles, with balls and tin cans. Then my father died, and since there were a lot of us kids, and we didn’t have enough money, my mother sold me to the boss and I came to live here in Marseille. At first, I didn’t know that my mother had sold me, but one day, I wanted to leave, and the boss caught me and beat me, and he told me that I couldn’t go back to live with my mother because she’d sold me and now he’d become like a father to me, so after that, I never left him again, because I didn’t want to see my mother. At first I was really sad, because I didn’t know anyone and I was all alone. But later I got used to it, because the boss is nice, he gives us as much as we want to eat, and it was better for me than staying with my mother since she didn’t want to take care of me anymore. There were six of us boys living with the boss, well at first there were seven, and one of them died, he got pneumonia and he died right away. So we would go and sit in the places the boss had paid for, and we begged, and we brought the money back in the evening, we kept a little and the rest was for the boss. He bought our food with it. The boss always told us to be careful not to get picked up by the police, because then we’d be taken to child welfare, and he couldn’t get us out of there. We never stayed for long in the same spot because of that, and the boss would take us someplace else afterward. First we lived in a hangar north of the city, then we had a trailer like my father’s, and we went to pitch camp with the gypsies in the vacant lots just outside of town. Now we’ve got a big house for all of us, just before you get to the storage tanks, and there are other children, they work for a boss called Marcel, and there’s Anita with still other children, two boys and three girls, I think the oldest one really is her daughter. We work around the train station, but not every day, so we won’t get spotted, and we also go down to the harbor, and over to Cours Belsunce, or on La Canebière. But now the boss says I’m too old to beg, he says that’s a job for little boys and girls, but he wants me to work a serious job, he’s teaching me how to be a pickpocket, steal from stores, from the marketplace. Look, see this suit, this shirt, these shoes, he stole it all for me in a store while I was keeping watch. A little while ago, if you’d wanted to, you could have left with your outfit for nothing, it’s easy, all you had to do was pick it out and I would have gotten it out of the store for you, I know the tricks. For example, for wallets, there have to be two of you, one takes it and passes it right away to the other, so you don’t get caught with it. The boss says I’ve got a knack for it because I have long agile hands. He says that’s good for playing music and for stealing. Now there are three of us boys doing it, along with Anita’s daughter, we stop into the supermarkets all over. Sometimes the boss says to Anita, come on, we’re going shopping at the supermarket, so he takes two boys, and sometimes Anita’s daughter and another boy, well, the other boy is always me. You know, supermarkets are really big, there are so many aisles you can get lost, aisles with things to eat, clothes, shoes, soaps, records, everything. So you can work fast in pairs. We’ve got a bag with a false bottom for the smaller things, and the things to eat, and Anita puts the rest in her stomach, she has a round thing she puts under her dress as if she were pregnant, and the boss has a trench coat with pockets all over the inside, so we grab everything we want and leave! You know, at first I was scared of getting caught, but all you need to do is choose the right time, and not falter. If you falter, you’ll get spotted by the detectives. I’m really good at recognizing detectives now, even from a long way off, they all have the same way of walking, of watching out of the corner of their eyes, I could pick them out a mile away. What I like best is working in the street with cars. The boss says he’s going to teach me to work with cars, that’s his specialty. Sometimes he goes into town and brings back a car so I can practice. He taught me how to pick the locked doors with a wire, or a fake key. Most cars can be opened with a fake key. Afterward, he shows me how to pull the wires out from under the dashboard and release the steering wheel lock. But he says I’m too young to drive. So I take whatever there is in the cars, and there’s often a bunch of stuff in the glove compartment, checkbooks, papers, even money, and under the seats, cameras, radio sets. I like working real early in the morning, all alone, when there’s no one in the streets, just a cat every now and again, and I really like to see the sun come up, and the nice clean sky in the morning. The boss also wants me to learn locks on the doors of houses, the rich villas around here, near the sea, he says that working in pairs, we could do some good jobs, because we’re light and we can scale up walls easily. So he’s teaching us the ropes, picking door locks, and opening windows too. He doesn’t want to do it anymore, he says he’s too old and that he couldn’t run if he had to anymore, but that’s not why, it’s because he already got caught once and it scared him. I already went once with a guy called Rito, he’s older than I am, he used to work for the boss and he took me along with him. We went into a street near the Prado, he’d scouted out a house, he knew no one was home. I didn’t go in, I stayed out in the garden while Rito was taking everything he could, then we carried it all over to the car where the boss was waiting. I was scared, because I was the one who stayed in the garden standing watch, and I think I would have been less scared if I’d gone into the house to work. But you have to know everything before you start or you’ll get caught. To get in, first of all you have to know how to find the right window, and then climb up a tree, or use the rainspout. You can’t get dizzy. And if the police come, you can’t panic, you have to stay still, or hide on the roof, because if you start running, they’ll get you in two shakes. So the boss shows us all that at our place, at the hotel, he has us scale up the house, he has us walk on the roof at night, he even teaches us to jump like paratroopers, it’s called rolling. But he says we’re not going to stay here indefinitely, we’re going to buy a trailer and leave for Spain. I’d rather go over to the area around Nice, but I think the boss prefers Spain. Wouldn’t you like to come with us? You know, I’d tell the boss you were a friend, he won’t ask you any questions, I’ll just tell him you’re my friend, and that you’re going to live with us in the trailer, it’ll be great. Maybe you could learn to work in the stores too, or else we could work the cars together, taking turns, that way people wouldn’t suspect anything? You know, Anita is really nice, I’m sure you’d like her a lot, she’s got blond hair and blue eyes, no one wants to believe she’s a gypsy. If you came with us, I wouldn’t mind not going to Nice, I wouldn’t mind going to Spain, or anywhere...”
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