What the day owes the nigth

by Yasmina Khadra

  Strange how sometimes we find the wisdom we lack in the most unlikely places. My life had been turned upside down, and it was a drunken whore who set me on my feet again with a few choice words in a sordid room in a dark, dingy hotel that reeled and swayed with the sound of sex and fighting. By the time I reached the door of the fondouk, I was feeling better and the evening breeze cleared my head completely. I walked from one end of the seafront to the other, looking out at the boats in the port, the cranes on the quays, and deep in the night, the trawlers moving over the silent waters like fireflies mirroring the stars. Then I went to a Turkish bath, where I scrubbed myself clean and slept the sleep of the just. The next morning at dawn, I caught the bus back to Río Salado, determined that if I caught myself wallowing in self-pity for even a moment, I would rip my heart out with my bare hands.

  I went back to work in the pharmacy. I was a little different, but I tried to remain clear-headed. At times I lost my patience trying to decipher some doctor’s scrawled prescription, or snapped at Germaine, who constantly fussed and worried over me, but then I would sigh, pull myself together and apologise. In the evenings, after we closed up, I would go out for a walk. I would go to the village square and watch Bruno, the young policeman, strutting about, twirling his police whistle round his finger. I liked his calm enthusiasm, the way he wore his kepi at a rakish angle, the exaggerated politeness he lavished on the pretty girls. I would sit on the terrace of a café, sipping my lemonade, and wait until it was dark before heading home. Sometimes I would lose myself, rambling through the orange groves. I was not lonely, but I missed having company. André had come back from America and business at the diner had picked up, but I was bored of playing pool, and José always beat me. Germaine thought about marrying me off. She invited a number of nieces to Río Salado in the hope that I might fall for one of them; I barely even noticed when they left.

  I saw Simon from time to time; we would say hello or wave to each other. Sometimes we’d sit together for a few minutes in a café and make small talk. At first he ticked me off for ‘skipping’ his wedding like some boring class at school, but he forgave me. I suppose he had more important things to think about. He was living at Émilie’s place, in the big house on the marabout road. Madame Cazenave had been insistent. Besides, there were no houses available in the village, and the Benyamins’ family home was small and unattractive.

  Fabrice had a second child and everyone got together to celebrate – everyone except Jean-Christophe, of whom we had had no news since his letter to Simon – in a beautiful villa on the cliff road outside Oran. It was here that André introduced us to his cousin, now his wife, a strapping Andalusian girl from Granada, tall and broad-shouldered with a powerful face and extraordinary green eyes. She was funny, but strict when it came to her husband’s manners. It was during the celebrations that I noticed that Émilie, too, was expecting a child.

  Some months later, Madame Cazenave went to French Guyana. The body of her husband, who had been prison governor at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni and had disappeared in the jungle during a manhunt, had been discovered by smugglers and identified from his personal effects. She never returned to Río Salado, not even to celebrate the birth of her grandson, Michel.

  In the summer of 1953, I met Jamila, the daughter of a Muslim lawyer my uncle had known since university. We met by accident in a restaurant in Nemours. Jamila was not particularly beautiful, but she reminded me of Lucette; I loved her serene face, the pale, delicate hands that cradled everything they touched – a napkin, a spoon, a bag, an apple – as delicately as though they were sacred relics. She had dark, intelligent eyes, a small round mouth and a seriousness that betrayed a strict but modern education that had prepared her for life and its challenges. Jamila was studying law, and hoped to be a barrister like her father. She wrote to me first, a few anodyne lines on the back of a postcard depicting the oasis at Bou Saada, where her father worked. It was some months before I wrote back. We exchanged letters and cards for many years, neither of us straying beyond polite formalities; both of us too shy and too reserved to make any declarations.

  On the first spring morning in 1954, my uncle asked me to take the car out of the garage. He was wearing the green suit he had not put on since the dinner in honour of Messali Hadj in Oran thirteen years earlier, a white shirt with a bow tie, a gold fob watch in the pocket of his waistcoat, black dress shoes and a fez he had bought recently in an old Turkish shop in Tlemcen.

  ‘I want to go and visit the grave of the patriarch,’ he informed me.

  Since I did not know where the tomb of the patriarch was, my uncle had to direct me through the villages and the hamlets. We drove all morning without stopping for lunch or even to rest. Germaine, who could not stand the smell of petrol, felt ill, and the road, twisting steeply up and down, almost finished her off. In the late afternoon we came to the summit of a rocky peak. Below, on the plains, a patchwork of olive groves struggled to maintain their lushness. Here and there the ground was cracked and eroded and the scrubland turned to desert. A few small reservoirs tried to keep up appearances, but it was clear that before long the drought would drain them dry. Several flocks of sheep grazed at the foot of the hills, as far from each other as the dusty hamlets. My uncle brought a hand up to shield his eyes and looked out towards the horizon. Apparently he could not see what he had come to find. He climbed a steep stony path to a copse, in the midst of which stood a crumbling ruin. It was the remains of a marabout, a shrine to a Muslim holy man, or a sepulchre from another age that harsh winters and sweltering summers had worn away to rubble. In the shade of a low wall, half-buried beneath a pile of stones, was a faded, broken headstone. This was the tomb of the patriarch. My uncle was heartbroken to find it in such a state. He picked up a beam, leaned it against the dirt wall and considered it sadly, then he reverently opened a worm-eaten door and stepped inside the crypt. Germaine and I waited in silence in the small courtyard overgrown with thick brambles. My uncle stayed in the tomb of the patriarch for a long time. Germaine went and sat on a rock and held her head in her hands. She had not said a word since we left Río Salado. When she was silent like this, I always feared the worst.

  My uncle rejoined us just as the sun was setting. The shadow of the sepulchre was now long and misshapen, and a cool breeze began to whistle through the brambles.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said, heading towards the car.

  I waited for him to talk to me about the patriarch, about our clan, about Lalla Fatna, about what had suddenly brought him here to this rocky peak fashioned by the wind; he said nothing. He sat next to me and did not take his eyes off the road even for a moment. We drove late into the night. Germaine fell asleep on the back seat. My uncle did not complain; he was lost in his thoughts. We had not eaten since morning, but he did not seem to notice. Looking at him, I saw his face was pale, his cheeks sunken; the look in his eyes reminded me of the look he used to have before he slipped into the nether world that had been his prison and his refuge for many years.

  ‘I’m worried about your uncle,’ Germaine told me some weeks later. I too was worried, though my uncle showed no real signs of having relapsed. He continued to read and write, to eat with us, to go out every morning and stroll through the vineyards; but he no longer spoke to us. He would nod, sometimes he would smile at Germaine to thank her when she brought him tea or smoothed his jacket, but he did not utter a word. Sometimes he would sit in the rocking chair on the balcony, staring out at the hills, then, when it grew dark, he would go back to his room, put on his slippers, and lock himself in his study.

  One night, he took to his bed and asked for me. His pallor was worse now and his hand, as he gripped my wrist, was cold, almost icy.

  ‘I would have liked to have lived to see your children, Jonas. I know they would have gladdened my heart. I’ve never bounced a baby on my knee.’

  His eyes glistened with tears.

  ‘Take a wife, Younes. Only love can make good the misfortunes and the evils o
f this world. And remember this: if a woman loves you, no star is beyond your grasp, no god can touch you.’

  I felt the cold coursing through him begin to flood through me with every shudder of his hand on my arm, seeping into my very being. My uncle went on talking to me for a long time; with every phrase he withdrew a little further from this world. He was slipping away. Germaine was weeping, slumped at the foot of the bed. Her sobs drowned out my uncle’s words. It was a strange night, profound and yet unreal. Outside, a jackal howled as I had never heard a beast howl. My uncle’s fingers, tight as a tourniquet, cut off the circulation to my fingers, leaving a purple bruise; my arm went numb. It was only when I saw Germaine cross herself and close her husband’s eyes that I accepted that someone I loved had the right to depart this life like the sun at dusk, like a candle with a breath of wind, and that the pain we suffered at his passing was simply a part of life.

  My uncle would not see his country take up arms. Destiny had judged him unworthy. How, otherwise, to explain the fact that he passed away five months before the long-awaited, oft-postponed firestorm erupted for independence? All Saints’ Day 1954 caught us unawares. The café owner stood behind the counter, cursing, reading his newspaper. The war of independence had begun, but ordinary mortals, after a brief outburst of indignation quickly forgotten, were not about to lose sleep over the burning of a handful of farms in Mitidja. There were a number of deaths in Mostaganem: policemen surprised by armed assailants. So what? they said. More people die in road accidents. What they did not know was that this time war had truly begun and there was no possible way back. A handful of revolutionaries had decided to take action, to shake up a population stupefied by a hundred years of colonisation, sorely tested by the various uprisings by isolated tribes that the colonial army, mythic and omnipotent, invariably quickly crushed after a few skirmishes, a few punitive raids, a war of attrition lasting several years. Even the famous Organisation Secrète, which become famous in the 1940s, had simply been a source of entertainment for a handful of bellicose Muslims. Surely the attacks that took place at midnight precisely on 1 November 1954 all over northern Algeria would turn out to be a flash in the pan, a fleeting spark of discontent by disorganised natives incapable of rallying to a cause?

  Not this time. The ‘acts of vandalism’ spread across the country, at first sporadically, then with increasing violence, and with terrifying audacity. The newspapers spoke of ‘terrorists’, of ‘rebels’, of ‘outlaws’. There were skirmishes here and there, notably in the djebels, and sometimes soldiers killed in the fighting were relieved of their weapons and their ammunition. In Algiers, a police station was razed to the ground, policemen and civil servants were murdered on street corners, traitors had their throats cut. In Kabylia, there was talk of suspect groups, even groups in full battle-dress with old guns, laying ambushes for the police and then vanishing into the scrubland. In the Aurès mountains, there were rumours of colonels leading whole squadrons, of elusive guerrilla armies and no-go areas. Not far from Río Salado, in the Felaoucene district, men began to leave the villages in droves for the hills, where nightly they would set up underground units. Closer still, barely a few kilometres away, Aïn Témouchent posted news of rebel attacks in the town square. Everywhere graffiti appeared, always the same three letters: FLN – Front de Libération Nationale – a vast organisation. The FLN had its own laws, its own directives. It made calls for a general uprising, decreed curfews and embargoes. It had its own tribunals, an administrative wing, well-organised, labyrinthine networks, an army and a clandestine radio station that streamed into every house at night, when the shutters were closed . . .

  In Río Salado, we were on another planet. News from elsewhere came to us tempered by an endless series of filters. True, there was a strange gleam now in the eyes of the Arabs working in the vineyards, but they still arrived at dawn and worked without let-up until sunset. In the cafés, people continued to gossip over a glass of anisette. Even Bruno, the policeman, did not think it necessary to take the safety catch off his gun; it was nothing, he said, a passing storm, everything would go back to the way it had been. It was several months before the ‘rebellion’ disturbed the tranquillity of Río Salado. Strangers burned an isolated farm; three times they burned vineyards and then blew up a wine cellar. This was too much. Jaime J. Sosa set up a private militia and set up a cordon around his vineyards. The police tried to reassure him, explaining that they were taking all necessary measures, but it was futile. By day, the farmers combed the area carrying their hunting rifles; by night, there were full military patrols complete with passwords and warning shots.

  Apart from a few dead boars, shot by trigger-happy militiamen, not a single suspect was arrested.

  In time, vigilance was relaxed and people once again began to walk the streets at night without fear.

  The grape harvests were celebrated in traditional style. Three big orchestras were brought in to play at the ball, and Río Salado danced until it was exhausted. Pépé Rucillio made the most of the season to marry a singer from Nemours forty years his junior. At first his sons protested, but given that their father’s fortune was incalculable, they went to the wedding, ate like pigs and dreamed of other banquets. It was during the wedding ceremony that I came face to face with Émilie. She was getting out of a car with her husband, cradling her child; I was coming out of the ballroom with Germaine on my arm. For a split second Émilie turned pale, but then she quickly turned to Simon and smiled and the two of them went in to join the festivities. I walked home, leaving my car parked next to my friend’s.

  Then tragedy struck.

  No one was expecting it. The war was now in its second year, and with the exception of the early acts of sabotage, Río Salado remained untouched. People went about their business as though nothing had happened, until one morning in February 1956. There was an atmosphere of fear in the village, the people seemed petrified, literally overtaken by events: when I saw the mob around André’s diner, I realised why.

  The body was lying on the ground, half inside and half outside the bar. One of the shoes was missing; lost as the man tried to fend off his attackers, or tried to run away. There was a gash that ran from the man’s heel to his calf . . . José had crawled some twenty metres before he died, as was obvious from the marks in the dust. His left hand was still clutching the door jamb. He had been stabbed over and over; his shirt had been ripped from top to bottom and there were a number of stab wounds visible on his bare back. He lay in a thick, dark pool of blood that dripped over the threshold of the diner. A shaft of sunlight lit up part of his face, and it was as though he had his ear pressed to the ground listening for something, the way, as kids, we’d pressed our ears to the railway track to see if a train was coming. His expression was like that of an opium addict; eyes wide but unseeing.

  ‘He used to say he was dung the Lord had stepped in,’ André said quietly. He was sitting slumped on the floor beside the bar, chin resting on his knees, hugging himself.

  He was barely visible in the half-light.

  He was crying.

  ‘I wanted him to live the good life, like the rest of my cousins, but he would never take anything from me. He was afraid I’d think he was taking advantage.’

  Simon was there, propped on the bar, his head in his hands. Bruno, the policeman, was sitting on a chair at the far end of the room, trying to recover from the shock. Two other men stood next to the pool table, dumbstruck.

  ‘Why him?’ André was overcome with grief. ‘José would have given anyone the shirt off his back if they’d asked.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ I heard someone behind me say.

  The mayor arrived and, seeing José’s body, clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle a scream. Cars began to pull into the diner’s car park. I heard doors slam. ‘What happened?’ someone asked. No one answered. In a few scant minutes, the whole village was there. José’s body was covered with a blanket. Outside, a woman began to wail. It was José’s mother. Her
family stopped her from coming near the body. There was a stir when André stepped out of the diner. He was livid, his eyes flashing with fury.

  ‘Where’s Jelloul?’ he roared, his whole body shaking with rage. ‘Where’s that idiot Jelloul?’

  Jelloul made his way through the crowd and stood before André. He was dazed; he didn’t know what to do with himself.

  ‘What the fuck were you doing while José was being stabbed?’

  Jelloul stared down at his shoes. André lifted the servant’s head with the tip of his riding crop.

  ‘Where the hell were you, you bastard? I told you not to leave the diner.’

  ‘My father was sick.’

  ‘Your father’s always sick. Why didn’t you tell me you were going back to your shack? José wouldn’t have come to take over from you and he’d still be alive now. And how come this happens the one night you’re not here?’

  Jelloul bowed his head, and André forced it up again with his riding crop.

  ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you . . . What cowardly bastard did this to José? You know who, don’t you? You were in it together, weren’t you? You went back to your shack so your accomplice could murder José; that way you’d have an alibi, you son of a bitch . . . Look at me, I said. Maybe it was you . . . You’ve been bitter and resentful for years, haven’t you, you fucker? What are you looking at the ground for? José is there!’ André screamed, pointing to the doorway. ‘I’m sure it was you. José would never have let himself be caught unawares by a stranger. It had to be someone he trusted. Show me your hands.’

  André checked Jelloul’s hands, his clothes, looking for some trace of blood, and finding nothing, started to whip him with his crop.

  ‘I suppose you think you’re clever? You murder José, then go home and change and come back here. That’s what happened, I’d stake my life on it. I know you.’

  Enraged by his own words, blinded by grief, he knocked Jelloul to the ground and began laying into him. No one in the crowd lifted a finger. André’s grief was too deep, it seemed, to be challenged. I went home, torn between anger and indignation, ashamed and degraded, pained by both José’s death and Jelloul’s suffering. That’s how it’s always been, I said to myself. When you can’t find a remedy for your pain, you look for someone to blame, and there was no better scapegoat at the scene of the crime than Jelloul.