“Avignon,” he murmured. “I must get you to Avignon!”
The driver roared laughing, and began to sing. “On y danse, on y danse, sur le pont de Avignooooonnn.” His singing voice reminded the dogs of warm gravy. Laurent licked his lips; Julia whimpered painfully. It was years since they’d had a drop of gravy, or anything prepared by women’s hands. They hoped the man would lead them to a kitchen fire. Julia pressed her wet snout against his shoulder but to no avail. On and on Alonzo droned and bellowed. Finally, the jalopy wheeled into a parking lot and stopped. Both men got out and slammed their doors.
The Café Bar Meridian is attached to a small hotel and stays open after midnight, when the owner, Marcel, feels inclined. Even in winter there are people who need rooms suddenly and sometimes late. Marcel had cleaned down the counter and mopped the floor when the travellers walked in.
“I hope you’re looking for a room,” he said to the two who stepped over his slop pail. “Otherwise I’m closed.”
“Two whiskeys,” Alonzo roared. “I’m paying. He’s lost his briefcase. Can you believe it! That’s a good one. Where is it, mon vieux?”
The passenger slid his hat onto the bar, took a seat and muttered a terse reply. Alonzo burst out laughing.
“HAHAHAHA! He says he must ‘a left it at the orgy’!”
Warmed by laughter, Marcel set three glasses on the bar and settled in for a rousing bit of chat.
When they’d gone he wondered who they were. He imagined they had come from far and would still be travelling when dawn broke. Two men on a long journey, one of them was completely mad, the other forgot his hat.
After dropping his passenger at the Porte St. Lazare, Alonzo wheeled out into the wide boulevard that circles the city.
“Might as well take time to see the sights,” he shouted over his shoulder. Julia and Laurent whimpered acquiescence. As he drove, he hummed an old familiar tune. It began to rain. The words came back and he belted out the melody, keeping time with the windshield wipers. A hit from his father’s time, it was a love song by Trenet, full of joy and yearning, a memory of a memory. He envied the stranger, a man in his prime, rushing to appointments, facing situations. Though the cause of his mad dash back to town, he’d been reluctant to divulge. Naturally a man of his sort would be discreet. There was about him a generous, enveloping spirit. Yes, he decided, an aura. In spite of his obsessions, a man of depth and soul.
“Imagine, leaving a briefcase at an orgy!” he exclaimed out loud. (Convinced they were being spoken to, Julia and Laurent barked agreement.) All very well and good, he thought, but a man like that is facing ordeals. Mustn’t let nostalgia have a go. No, it wouldn’t do to pine after a life like that.
Then, out of nowhere, a thought hit him broadside. As clear and sharp as stone, it woke him up and stung. He pulled the car over on a grassy knoll, with a view of some distant town, and got out.
What if those bitches are right? What if I am going daft?
As soon as the pebble thought hit, another followed. As soft and kind as a blanket, it spoke directly to him: “If you think you might be going mad — then — definitely you are not — yet.”
He laughed out loud. Then, so that anyone who cared could hear, he shouted, Yes, I am on my way mad-crazy-senile-gaga! But not quite there yet!
Looking up at the starlit sky, he vowed to remember the moment forever.
TWENTY-ONE
NELLY WAS READING BY THE fire when the doorbell rang. Three urgent bursts, and before she could reach the vestibule, a long blast. Expecting Magali who routinely forgot her keys, she flung open the door, ready with a stiff reproof. It was Piers, cheeks flushed, eyes ablaze as though he’d been running. His long black coat was soaked, rivulets of rain streaming down his face. Without a word, he brushed past and raced up the stairs, taking two at a time.
She called after him, asking if he wanted tea, but he was already out of sight. Moments later he came rushing back down, this time dressed in a leather jacket.
“I forgot this!” he said, waving an envelope. Her response was to hand him an umbrella. He kissed her three times on the cheeks, uttering a hoarse bonsoir madame, and disappeared into the rain. The night air whirled around her ankles as she peered into the empty street. What was he up to, turning up after midnight like an empty-handed beggar, rushing off again when he should have been settling down to work? She’d thought he was working in his room. In a doorway across the street, she saw the shadow of something moving, a beggar seeking refuge from a wild November night. She closed the door and turned the lock.
The sitting room was stifling. A large log piled on olive-wood coals had finally caught, sending off gusts of heat. She opened the window for a breath of air. Two green eyes peered at her from across the street. It could be that wolf, she thought. A rabid beast had entered the city by mistake, and slaughtered several cats, including the pregnant mother of Caesar, or so her neighbour claimed. Reaching for the phone to summon police, she heard a familiar bark and looked closer, recognized the eyes.
“Mon Dieu! What are you doing over there?” she scolded. At the sound of her voice, The General let out a meek growl, as if to say it’s not my fault, and stumbled toward the front door, wagging his tail furiously.
She ordered him to go around to the back door. Keeping his head down, he shifted direction and padded toward an alley at the end of the block that led round to the garden gate. She was waiting, and marched him into the kitchen, ready with a lecture, until she noticed he was favouring his left front leg. A gash on his snout was caked with blood.
“Where have you been, eh? How did you get out? You’re far too old for the night life, mon Général. Stay home at night! Listen to me,” she said softly, massaging his wet fur with a towel. After devouring a slice of ham with a clump of bread soaked in warm water, he headed for his bed beneath the table, tired but unrepentant.
Her hands smelled of dog, a pungent mixture of old hair and fresh sweat, evidence of a scuffle in a back alley somewhere. She’d thought he was beyond the game of growls and snaps. So you’ve still got your manhood, even into old age, she mused. If his dreams were still of battle, ancient victories and future threats, then there was no use scolding. What did the other combatant look like? she wondered. A snappy little cur with hound’s-tooth prints along its bony haunch? The pulse of life, the thought pleased her.
The fire had settled down to a steady blaze. She closed the window and retrieved her book, the last in a stack that had taken her weeks to go through. Not exactly great literature, she concluded, but nothing that would harm a weary lot of caged men either. Her written report would say so, and leave it at that. If Hervé Brunet ventured to ask (she sus pected he would not), she would say that all of the books donated by the famous professor, at least those she’d been asked to read, were about sex — a common human impulse, therefore deserving a place in literature. Few were content to mention the act. They inevitably tried to recreate its effect, somehow capture in words the clouds of lust and emotion around the act. Most often they failed. Accounts of fictional characters’ sexual experiences on the page seemed no more real or tangible to her than descriptions of flora and fauna in Madagascar. Or maybe I’m too old to judge, she thought. Those days are over.
One book remained. Nothing like the others, it was the most beautiful volume in the pile, a hardcover, the spine bound in red leather with gold lettering, and yet described as a manual of instruction. When she opened it, a waft of attic mildew escaped from pages turned the colour of desert sand. The full title was The Perfumed Garden, A Manual of Arab Erotology. Written by Sheikh Nefzaoui in the sixteenth century, it was a reprint of the first translation made by an unnamed captain in the French army, 1850. A bestseller since it first appeared, the book she held in her hands was published by Les Editions Georges-Anquetil in 1927. Glancing first at the index, she saw the twenty chapters covered almost every imaginable aspect of “things
relating to the act of generation”: attractive qualities of men and women, causes of enjoyment; the sexuality of animals; treatments for sterility, impotence, small members, body odours; commentary on virtue, deceit and pregnancy. A virtual manual of desire, a practical book. No story to tell, no erotic agenda.
From the moment she began to read, a booming voice rose up from the page. Standing over her shoulder was Sheikh Nefzaoui himself, a large, lusty man from another world, spilling out his joyful harangue as if to an innocent reader who had everything to learn. His words, elegant and completely exotic, gushy by turns, then blunt and practical, sometimes both in the same passage, a dizzy mixture. Most surprising of all, Sheikh Nefzaoui knew things about women she had never seen in print before.
Praise be given to God, who has placed man’s greatest pleasure in the natural parts of woman, and has destined the natural parts of man to afford the greatest enjoyment to woman. He has not endowed the parts of woman with any pleasurable or satisfactory feeling until the same have been penetrated by the instrument of the male; and likewise the sexual or gans of man know neither rest nor quietness until they have entered those of the female. Hence the mutual operation. There takes place between the two actors wrestling, intertwinings, a kind of animated conflict. Owing to the contact of the lower parts of the two bellies, the enjoyment soon comes to pass. The man is at work with a pestle, while the woman seconds him by lascivious movements; finally comes the ejaculation.
God also it is who has embellished the chest of the woman with breasts, has furnished her with a double chin, and has given brilliant colours to her cheeks. He has also gifted her with eyes that inspire love, and with eyelashes like polished blades. He has furnished her with a rounded belly and a beautiful navel, and with a majestic rump, and all these wonders are borne up by the thighs. It is between these latter that God has placed the arena of the combat; when the same is provided with ample flesh, it resembles the head of a lion. It is called the vulva. Oh! How many men’s deaths lie at her door? Amongst them, how many heroes!
Passages of advice were mixed with stories supposedly illustrating the facts. Delicious tales, they were all about journeys with only one destination. The speaker, a cross between a mad professor and a Provençal rustic whose knowledge sprang from barnyard lore and blood sport. Or a clownish priest of sex who saw no gap between particular experience (his) and the eternal. When she wasn’t helpless with laughter, she was tempted to interrupt by pointing out that much of what he offered as fact was superstition or science that had long since been contradicted. And by praising Allah/God as the source of libido, did he not effectively rule out any hope of morality? But there was no arguing with a sage who rolled out advice with the speed and authority of Zeus.
The Master of the Universe has bestowed upon women the empire of seduction; all men, weak or strong, are subjected to a weakness for the love of woman. Through woman we have society or dispersion, sojourn or emigration. I, servant of God, am thankful to him that no one can help falling in love with beautiful women, and that no one can escape the desire to possess them, neither by change, nor flight, nor separation.
Fire consumed the olive log and died, but Nelly didn’t notice.
TWENTY-TWO
A FEW FLAKES. NO MORE THAN a shake or two of ground pepper on his tongue, but the effect was instant. As if a wire had fallen from heaven and fastened itself to the top of his head and was now pulling up, Mouloud’s feet hardly touched the pavement. He was light-headed at first, then light all over. His mouth tasted chalky, like during Ramadan. Fatiha always insisted he fast. He resisted at first and cheated behind her back, but soon fell into the rhythm and began to look forward to the half-hour before sunset when hunger, like a fist, gripped his insides and twisted. Finally he began to see what fasting was all about: insulation against pain. It makes you strong. Everything looked sharp and clear, his eyes seemed to penetrate the night. A few seconds or half an hour, he couldn’t tell the difference.
But this feeling was different. Nothing to do with pain, it was a gift. The first time, he’d been walking along the street one night and there was Selim, coming toward him, smiling like a long-lost brother, as if nothing had happened. Not a word about Remy or who would have to pay for what happened. “Enjoy,” he’d said, slipping him the treat. “Take it from me, here, take it. Never mind the money. It’s on me, cheb. Hey, I hear you’re part of the rave at the Lion d’Or. The Troubadours. Awesome! I’ll be there. We’ll talk. Look out for me.”
Selim disappeared. Mouloud stood in front of the merry go round in Place de l’Horloge, staring at the curves and colours and gold trim, mesmerized by the beauty of a giant toy, wondering if he’d been dreaming. But the gift was real. Now it all made sense. Trailing Piers Le Gris had been a waste of time. Nobody appeared out of the dark to grab him and make him pay. Selim had a lot on the go. He didn’t have time to worry about chaff. He knew everybody, even the people behind the concert. He knew their two-bit garage band was called the Troubadours, meaning he’d made a point of finding out. In the days that followed, the sick fear that had hung over him since the fight outside his room had lifted, and he’d started to think that maybe the move to Marseille would happen after all. Selim had said let’s talk, which was another way of saying, I’ve got a job, I need you.
It was a forty-minute walk from his room to the concert venue outside the walls, a cavernous warehouse with high ceilings and a vast parking lot. The event was bigger than he had expected. He’d had to use a map and set out early so as not to be late. Now there was time to kill after the sound-check which was supposed to happen at seven. The other band members had come by car, and turned up twenty minutes late but nobody seemed to notice. Everything was running behind.
Waiting around unnerved Mouloud. He’d been sure the others wouldn’t show. In the end, there wasn’t much to do after the stage manager told them where to come on. They were about to head for a smoke behind the lead guitar player’s van when the manager called Mouloud back and said there’d been a change in the schedule. The Troubadours had been moved to the second half of the show. At the last minute, he muttered something like, “If there’s time.”
The other band members didn’t like the sound of it. Mouloud told them not to worry, but he had a sinking feeling they’d never get a chance to play. The rest of the line-up consisted of established names. The other musicians all seemed to know each other and be friends of the people running the event. The Troubadours had been offered the gig on the basis of a sketchy demo and a quick conversation with a guy Mouloud had met in a bar. It all seemed too good to be true.
By nine, people started trickling into the hall. A disco CD throbbed over the sound system, but he couldn’t get into the mood, decided to take a walk, heading out through the open gate of a high iron fence decorated by a gigantic painting of a lion. He kept his head down, eyes on the pavement. From behind, someone shouted his name, slapped him on the back. It was Selim, come to wish him luck. He handed him a tiny folded paper containing grains of magic. Mouloud slipped it into his jeans pocket. He knew he should wait until after the concert, but halfway round the block he swallowed the whole thing. After that, putting in time was easy.
At midnight the hall was packed. He couldn’t believe there were so many people. Where had they all come from? The streets had looked empty. After a couple of warm-up acts, a rai band came on and the crowd woke up. Disco Maghreb, direct from Oran, slick, totally derivative, not a nanosecond of originality between them, which is why they were so big, he decided. They’d stolen every note and move. Worse still, their claim to being Moroccan was just as faint. As the lead bellowed out a bad imitation of Sting, Mouloud abandoned his corner of privacy backstage and plunged into the crowd, a few hundred gyrating fans in a wide pit below the stage.
He could feel himself sinking back to earth, and was glad of it. If he flew too high, he might not be able to play. He picked his way through a sea of strangers, eyes focus
ed straight ahead, as though he had serious business on the other side of the room. The crowd pressed in, choking him. He wished he’d stayed on the sidelines. A question, seriously buried until now, drifted to the surface of his mind: where was she? He’d vowed not to care whether she turned up or not, but sober reality triggered an overpowering reversal. Now catching sight of her was all he cared about.
After a few false starts Magali found the venue on a side street off the Route de Tarascon, a part of the city she didn’t know. She’d taken the wrong bus and had to double back, fighting rain. Following the music, she came to a high iron fence with an oversized lion’s face on the gate below a sign, Club Privé. Bouncers guarded the doors. She’d given Piers her invitation, and had to buy a ticket. She wished she’d asked him to come with her, but at the time had been reluctant to disturb his routine. The whole point of inviting Piers had been to avoid wandering around alone, feeling out of place in a strange environment, which was exactly what was happening. Bad planning, she thought. If she hadn’t said she’d meet him, she’d have turned around and headed home.
None of her friends had even heard about the concert, and nobody wanted to come along. Probably one of those government-sponsored events meant to convince immigrants their culture matters, they said. Expect speeches, amateur acts, belly dancing. But it wasn’t that at all. The band was pumping out a disco beat and there was a dance floor near the stage. The crowd was young, mostly guys dressed in tight pants and big belts. Some of the women wore headscarves but they also had on high heels and makeup. A clutch of older men gathered at the entrance in serious discussion, as if they had come to do business and it wasn’t music.
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