What the day owes the nigth

by Yasmina Khadra

  Jelloul was arrested, handcuffed and taken to the police station. There were rumours that he had confessed, that the murder had little to do with the upheavals festering all over the country. Even so, death had struck the village and no one could be sure that there might not be something to these ideas. The farmers redoubled their patrols, and from time to time, gunfire punctuated the howls of the jackals in the night. The following morning there would be talk of fending off suspected intruders, of undesirables taken out like vermin, of arson attempts foiled. One morning, heading towards Lourmel, I saw a crowd of excited farmers with guns by the roadside. Lying at their feet was the bloody body of a young Muslim dressed in rags, displayed like a hunting trophy. Next to him was a battered old gun, the damning evidence against him.

  A few weeks later, a puny, sickly boy came to see me at the pharmacy. He asked me to go with him. A weeping woman was sitting on the pavement on the opposite side of the street, surrounded by a brood of children.

  ‘That’s Jelloul’s mother,’ the little boy told me.

  She threw herself at my feet. I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say; her words were drowned out by her sobbing, her frantic pleading panicked me. I led her into the back office of the pharmacy and tried to calm her down so that I could work out what she was saying. She was talking quickly, getting the sequence of events mixed up, every sentence trailing off into trancelike silence. Her cheeks were covered in scratches. She had clearly been clawing at her face in grief. Finally, exhausted, she accepted a glass of water and collapsed on to a bench. She told me of the problems her family had been having, her husband who had had both arms amputated, the prayers she had said at every marabout in the area, before throwing herself at my feet again and begging me to save Jelloul.

  ‘He’s innocent, everyone in the douar will tell you. Jelloul was with us the whole night the roumi was killed, I swear. I went to the mayor, to the police, to the kaids, but no one will listen. You’re our last hope. Monsieur André is your friend, he’ll listen to you. Jelloul is not a murderer. His father took a turn that night and I sent my nephew to fetch him. It’s not fair. They’re going to execute him for no reason at all.’ The little boy was the nephew she had mentioned. He confirmed what she had said, that Jelloul had never raised a hand to José, that he was very fond of him.

  I did not see what I could do, but I promised to talk to André. After they left, I lost my nerve and decided to do nothing. I knew that the decision of the court would be final and that André would not listen to me. Since José’s death, he had been in a state of constant fury, beating the Arabs working in his fields for minor infractions. I spent a restless night, my sleep filled with nightmares so terrifying that more than once I had to turn on the lamp on my bedside table. The grief of this half-mad woman and her brood filled me with a petrifying unease. My head was filled with wailing and inchoate lamentations. The following morning, I did not have the energy to work in the pharmacy. I thought about what I should do and decided it was best to stay out of things. I couldn’t imagine pleading Jelloul’s case with André, who was almost unrecognisable he was so filled with hate and anger. He was quite capable of treating my intervention as a Muslim siding with a murderer from his own community. Hadn’t he brushed me off when I tried to offer my condolences at José’s funeral; hadn’t he said that all Arabs were ungrateful cowards? Why would he say such a thing in the Christian cemetery where I was the only Muslim if not to hurt me?

  Two days later, I was surprised to find myself pulling up outside Jaime Jiménez Sosa’s farm. André was not at home. I asked to see his father. A servant told me to wait in my car while he went to find out whether the master was prepared to see me. He reappeared a moment later and led me to a hill overlooking the plains. Jaime Jiménez Sosa had just come back from a ride and was entrusting his horse to his groom. He stared at me for a moment, puzzled by my visit, and then, having slapped the horse’s rump, he walked towards me.

  ‘What can I do for you, Jonas?’ he said brusquely as he approached. ‘You don’t drink wine and it’s not grape-picking season.’

  A servant rushed over to take his pith helmet and his riding crop; Jaime waved him away contemptuously, then walked straight past me without stopping to shake my hand.

  I followed him.

  ‘What’s the problem, Jonas?’

  ‘It’s a bit complicated.’

  ‘Then get to the point.’

  ‘You’re not exactly making it easy, rushing off like that.’

  He slowed a little, then, pushing his helmet off his face, he looked at me.

  ‘I’m listening . . .’

  ‘It’s about Jelloul.’

  He flinched and clenched his jaw, and taking off his helmet, mopped his face with a handkerchief.

  ‘You disappoint me, young man,’ he said. ‘You’re not cut from the same cloth, and you’re better off where you are.’

  ‘There’s been some misunderstanding.’

  ‘Really? And what might that be?’

  ‘Jelloul might be innocent.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been employing Arabs for generations, I know what they’re like . . . Vipers, the lot of them. And that vermin confessed. He’s been found guilty and I’ll personally see to it that he goes to the guillotine.’

  He came over to me, took me by the arm and suggested I walk with him a while.

  ‘This is serious, Jonas. This isn’t some hothead making speeches; this is war. The country is crumbling; this is no time to sit on the fence. We have to strike hard, we cannot tolerate any laxness. These crazy murderers need to know that we are not going to give in. Every bastard we get our hands on has to pay for the others.’

  ‘His family came to see me—’

  ‘Jonas, poor little Jonas.’ He cut me off. ‘You don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about. You are an honest, sincere, well-brought-up young man. You need to steer clear of these thugs. It will only confuse you.’

  He was furious at my insistence and outraged at having to lower himself to speak about the fate of a manservant. He let go of my arm, forced a wry smile, put his handkerchief back in his pocket and nodded for me to follow him.

  ‘Come with me, Jonas . . .’

  He walked on ahead, grabbing a glass of orange juice held out to him by a servant who had appeared from nowhere. Jaime Jiménez Sosa was a stocky man, but he seemed to have grown several inches. A large sweat stain blossomed on his shirt as it billowed in the wind. Wearing jodhpurs, with his pith helmet slung around his neck, he looked as though with every step he was conquering the world.

  When we got to the top of the hill, he stood, legs apart, his hand describing a large arc, holding his glass like a sceptre. Down below, vineyards stretched away across the plains as far as the eye could see. In the misty grey distance, the mountains seemed like sleeping prehistoric monsters. Jaime surveyed the landscape, nodding as he did so: a god contemplating his universe could not have been as inspiring.

  ‘Look, Jonas . . . isn’t it magnificent?’

  His glass trembled in his hand.

  ‘It is the most wonderful sight in the world.’

  When I said nothing, he shook his head slowly and went back to surveying his vineyards, which stretched all the way to the horizon.

  ‘Sometimes . . .’ he said, ‘sometimes when I come here to look at it, I think of the men who, long ago, did just as I am doing, and I wonder what they saw. I try to picture this landscape through the ages, to stand in the shoes of the Berber nomad, the Phoenician explorer, the Christian evangelist, the Roman centurion, the Vandal chief, the Muslim conqueror – all the men whom destiny brought this way and who stopped on the brow of this hill exactly where I’m standing now.’

  He turned and glared at me.

  ‘What did they see when they looked out here down through the centuries?’ he asked me. ‘I’ll tell you. Nothing. There was nothing to see, nothing but a wilderness of rats and snakes and a few hills covered with weeds; may
be a pond that’s dried up since, and a path leading nowhere . . .’

  As he threw his arms wide to encompass the whole plain, drops of orange juice glittered in the air. He came back and stood next to me and went on:

  ‘When my great-grandfather set his sight on this god forsaken hole, he believed he would go to his grave without ever making a profit from it. I’ve got photos back at the house. There wasn’t a shack for miles, not a tree, not so much as a skeleton blanched by the sun. But my great-grandfather did not move on; he rolled up his sleeves, he made the tools he needed with his bare hands, and he hoed and weeded and tilled this land until his hands could barely hold his knife to cut bread. It was hard labour; he worked day and night, and the seasons were hellish. But my family did not give up, not once, not even for a second. Some died from exhaustion, others from disease, but not one of them had any doubts about what they were building here. And thanks to my family, Jonas, thanks to its sacrifices and its faith, this land was tamed. Generation after generation it was transformed into vineyards and orange groves. Every tree you see around you is a chapter in the history of my ancestors. Every orange you pick contains a drop of their sweat, every mouthful of juice the taste of their dedication.’

  He gestured theatrically, his hand sweeping over the farm.

  ‘That mansion I think of as my castle, the huge white house where I was born, where I played as a child, my father built it with his own hands like a monument to the glory of his ancestors. This country owes everything to us . . . We built the roads, we laid the railway lines that run to the edge of the Sahara, we threw bridges across the rivers, built towns and cities each more beautiful than the last and idyllic villages in the depths of the scrubland. From a thousand-year-old wasteland we built a great and thriving country; from barren rock we created the Garden of Eden . . . And now they expect us to believe that we did all this for nothing?’

  His roar was such that I felt his spittle on my face.

  His eyes grew dark and he waved his finger pompously beneath my nose.

  ‘Well I don’t believe it, Jonas. We didn’t wear out our bodies and our hearts for a puff of smoke. This land knows its people, and we are that people, we have served it as few sons have served their mother. This land is generous because she knows we love her. The grapes she gives us, she drinks with us. Listen to her, and she will tell you that we have earned every plot of land we hold. We came here to a dead place and we breathed life into it. It is our blood, our sweat that feeds its rivers. No one, Monsieur Jonas, no one on this planet or any other can take from us the right to go on serving her until the end of time. Especially not the idle vermin who think that by shooting a few farmers they can cut the ground out from under us.’

  The glass in his hand was shaking. He stared at me, his eye attempting to bore straight through me.

  ‘These lands do not belong to them. If the land could speak, she would curse these criminals just as I curse them whenever I see them burn down another farm. If they think they can frighten us, they are wasting their time and ours. We will never give up. We created Algeria, it is our finest creation, and we will not let some unclean hand despoil our crops, our harvests.’

  From a dim corner of my memory where I had thought him buried came an image of Abdelkader, red with shame, standing at the front of my primary school class. I could picture him squirming in pain as the teacher twisted his ear, and hear Maurice’s voice explode in my head: ‘Because Arabs are lazy and shiftless, sir.’ A wave of shock ran though my body like an underground explosion rippling through a castle moat. The same blind fury I had felt that day at school surged through me like a stream of lava coursing from deep in my belly. Suddenly I forgot why I had come, forgot the consequences for Jelloul, his mother’s worry, and could see only Monsieur Sosa in all his arrogance, the repulsive glare of his overweening pride, which seemed to give a purulent tinge to the sunlight.

  Unconsciously, unable to stop myself, I drew myself up to my full height and in a voice clear and sharp as the blade of a scimitar, I said:

  ‘A long, long time ago, Monsieur Sosa, long before you and your great-grandfather, a man stood where you are standing now. When he looked out over the plains, he could feel at one with it. There were no roads, no railroad tracks and the mastic trees and the brambles did not bother him. Every river, dead or alive, every shadow, every pebble reflected the image of his own humility. This man was self-possessed, because he was free. He had nothing, nothing but a flute to calm his flock of goats and a club to ward off the jackals. When he lay down in the shade of this tree here, he had only to close his eyes and he could hear himself live. The crust of bread and the slice of onion he ate tasted better than a thousand banquets. He was lucky enough to find abundance even in frugality. He lived to the rhythm of the seasons, believing that peace of mind lies in the simplicity of things. It is because he meant no ill to anyone that he felt safe from aggression until the day that, on the horizon he furnished with his dreams, he saw the approaching storm. They took away his flute and his club, took away his lands and his flock, took away everything that comforted his soul. And now they expect him to believe that he was here merely by accident; they are amazed and angry when he demands a little respect. Well, I disagree, monsieur. This land does not belong to you. It belongs to that ancient shepherd whose ghost is standing next to you, though you refuse to see it. Since you do not know how to share, take your vineyards and your bridges, your paved roads and your railway tracks, your cities and your gardens and give back what remains to its rightful owners.’

  ‘You are an intelligent boy, Jonas,’ he retorted, unmoved. ‘You were brought up in the right place. Stay here. The fellagas do not know how to build; if they were given paradise they would reduce it to rubble. All they can bring to your people is misfortune and disappointment.’

  ‘You should take a look at the villages around you, Monsieur Sosa. Misfortune holds sway here since you reduced free men to the rank of beasts of burden.’

  With that, I left him standing there and walked back to my car, my head whistling like a desert wind.

  17

  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE showed up unexpectedly in the spring of 1957. It was Bruno the policeman who gave me the news as I came out of the post office.

  ‘So, how was the reunion?’

  ‘What reunion?’

  ‘You mean you don’t know? Chris is home, he got back two days ago . . .’

  Two days ago? Jean-Christophe had been back in Río Salado for two days and no one had told me? I had seen Simon the night before; we had even talked a little. Why hadn’t he told me?

  Back at the pharmacy, I phoned Simon at his office, though it was only a stone’s throw from the post office – I don’t know why I decided to phone him rather than call and see him. Maybe I was afraid of making him feel embarrassed, or afraid of seeing in his eyes what I already suspected: that Jean-Christophe still bore a grudge against me and did not want to see me.

  Simon’s voice quavered on the other end of the line:

  ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I swear, I thought you knew.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you?’

  Simon cleared his throat. He was embarrassed.

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘It’s okay, I understand.’

  I hung up.

  Germaine, who had just come back from the market, set her basket down on the floor and gave me a lopsided look.

  ‘Who was that on the phone?’

  ‘Just some customer complaining,’ I reassured her.

  She picked up her basket and went upstairs to the apartment. When she got to the landing, she stopped for a second, then came down a few steps and looked at me.

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you . . . Oh, by the way, I’ve invited Bernadette to come down for the end-of-season ball. I hope you’re not going to let her down too. She�
��s a fine girl; she might not look it, but she’s clever. Not educated, I’ll grant you, but you won’t find a better match than her. And she’s pretty, too . . .’

  I had met Bernadette when she was a little girl, at the funeral of her father, who had been killed in the attack on the naval base at Mers-el-Kébir in 1940 – a skinny child who’d stood a little apart while her cousins played with a hoop.

  ‘You know perfectly well that I don’t go to balls any more.’

  ‘Precisely . . .’

  And she went upstairs.

  Simon called me back, having had time to think.

  ‘What did you mean, you understand, Jonas?’

  ‘I find it strange that you didn’t tell me that Chris was back. I thought we were still friends.’

  ‘Nothing about our friendship has changed; I’m still as fond of you as ever. I know my job hasn’t left me much time off, but you’re always in my thoughts. You’re the one who’s been distant. You’ve never come to visit us at the new house, not once. Every time we run into each other in the street, you’re always in a hurry to get off somewhere. I don’t know what’s got into you, but it’s not me who’s changed. And I swear I thought you knew Chris was back. Actually, I haven’t seen much of him, I left him to his family. If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t even phoned Fabrice to tell him the good news. I’ll do it now. The four of us can get together, just like the good old days. I know a great bistro in Aïn Truck. What do you say?’

  I knew he was lying. He was talking too quickly, as though rattling off something he’d learned by heart, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He promised to pick me up after work so we could go to Jean-Christophe’s house together.