I waited, but he didn’t come. I closed up the shop and waited a little longer. When it got dark, I sat out on the steps of the shop, watching shadows moving in the streets, trying to pick out Simon’s. He didn’t come. I decided to go to Jean-Christophe’s house on my own . . . Which was a mistake. Simon’s car was parked outside the front door, beneath an avalanche of mimosa; next to it was André’s car and the mayor’s car and the grocer’s car for all I knew. I was furious. Something told me to turn around and go home, but I didn’t listen. I rang the doorbell. Somewhere a shutter creaked then slammed shut. It was a long time before someone opened the door. A woman I didn’t know, probably a visiting relative, asked what I wanted.
‘I’m Jonas, I’m a friend of Chris.’
‘I’m sorry, he’s asleep.’
I felt like barging past her, storming straight into the living room where everyone was holding their breath and surprising Jean-Christophe there with his friends and relatives. But I did nothing. There was nothing to be done. Everything was crystal clear. I nodded, took a step back, waited for the woman to close the door, then drove home. Germaine did not ask me where I’d been; it was kind of her.
The following day, Simon showed up looking tight-lipped.
‘I swear I don’t understand what’s going on,’ he stammered.
‘There’s nothing to understand. He doesn’t want to see me, that’s all. And you’ve known that from the beginning. That’s why you didn’t say anything when I ran into you two days ago.’
‘Okay. You’re right, I did know. In fact it was the first thing he said to me, that I wasn’t allowed to mention your name. He actually insisted I tell you that he didn’t want you to come by and see him. I refused, obviously.’
He lifted the hatch and came behind the counter, wringing his hands. His forehead was slick with sweat; his receding hairline glistened in the light.
‘Don’t hate him. He’s had it rough. He fought on the front line in Indochina. He was captured and wounded twice. He was demobbed when he got out of hospital. You have to give him some time.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Simon.’
‘I was going to come by and pick you up yesterday, like I promised.’
‘I waited . . .’
‘I know. I went round to see Jean-Christophe first, to try to persuade him to see you. I could hardly just bring you round; he would have been furious, and that would just have made matters worse.’
‘You’re right, there’s no point forcing his hand.’
‘That’s not what I mean. He’s unpredictable. He’s not the same. Even with me. When I invited him round to meet Émilie and the kid, he flew into a rage. Never! he screamed at me. Never! You’d think I’d suggested taking him to hell. I don’t understand. Maybe it’s because of what he went through in the war. Sometimes I look at him and it’s like he’s a little crazy. If you saw his eyes – empty as the twin barrels of a rifle. I pity him. Don’t hate him, Jonas. We have to be patient.’
When I did not reply, he tried another tack:
‘I called Fabrice. Hélène told me he’s in Algiers on account of what’s happening in the Casbah. She doesn’t know when he’ll be back. Maybe by the time he gets home, Chris will have come round.’
Resentment prickled in me, insistent and biting, and I lashed out.
‘You were all there last night.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted with a tired smile.
He leaned towards me, watching every twitch of my face.
‘What happened between the two of you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Come on, you can’t expect me to believe that. You had something to do with him leaving in the first place, didn’t you? It was because of you that he signed up and allowed himself to be torn to pieces by those slitty-eyed bastards. What the hell happened? I didn’t sleep a wink for thinking about it. I thought of every possible scenario, but it doesn’t make sense.’
‘You’re right, Simon. Let’s give it time – time can’t keep a secret, it’s bound to tell us some day.’
‘Is it something to do with Isabelle?’
‘Simon, please, just drop it.’
That weekend I saw Jean-Christophe, from afar. I was coming out of the shoemaker’s and he was coming out of the town hall. He was so thin he looked six inches taller. His hair was shaved, with a single blonde lock that fell over his forehead. He wore a thick coat in spite of the weather and limped slightly, leaning on a walking stick. Isabelle was with him, holding his arm. I had never seen her so beautiful, so down-to-earth. Her humility was almost admirable. They were walking slowly and chatting. It was Isabelle who did the talking; Jean-Christophe just nodded from time to time. They seemed to glow with a sort of serene happiness, something ageless and enduring. I could not help but feel a pang of affection for them, this couple who could grow and mellow in silence and in questioning, made stronger by the tribulations they had come through together. I felt my heart go out to them, like a prayer that their reunion might last for ever. Perhaps because seeing them reminded me of my uncle and Germaine strolling through the orange groves. Seeing them together again, it was as though nothing had ever happened. I realised that I could not but go on being fond of one and loving the other. And yet I felt overwhelmed by a grief as terrible as I had felt when my uncle had died.
I felt tears prick my eyes, and I cursed Jean-Christophe for moving on with his life and leaving me stranded on the platform. I felt as though he had dismissed me on the basis of one snap judgement. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to forgive me. Forgive me for what? What had I done? I felt I had more than paid for my loyalty; that my misdeed had hurt me first and foremost, hurt me much more than it had hurt others. It was strange. I was love and hate tied up in a single package, imprisoned in a straitjacket. I felt myself slipping towards something I could not quite define that was pulling me in all directions, distorting my perceptions, my thoughts, the very fibres of my being, like a werewolf transforming in all his monstrosity under cover of darkness. I was consumed by an inner fury that was insidious, corrosive. I was jealous when I saw others find their place in the world even as mine was crumbling around me. I was jealous when I saw Simon and Émilie walking together on the avenue, their little boy running on ahead; jealous of the intimacy they shared, an intimacy that excluded me; jealous of the aura that surrounded Jean-Christophe and Isabelle; jealous of every couple I met in Río Salado, in Lourmel, in Oran, of the couples I stumbled on by accident, as I roamed restlessly like the god of a shattered universe who realises that he does not have the energy to re-create a new one. I found myself spending the empty days wandering through the Muslim neighbourhoods of Oran, sitting at tables with people I didn’t know, whose very presence deepened my loneliness. I found myself back in Medina J’dida, drinking water flavoured with oil of cade, getting to know an ageing Mozabite bookseller in a baggy sarouel, learning from a young imam of staggering erudition, listening to the ragged shoeshine boys – the yaouleds – talking about the war that was ripping Algeria apart. They knew much more about it than did I, the educated, intelligent pharmacist. I began to memorise names hitherto unknown to me, names that sounded in my mouth like the call of the muezzin: Ben M’hidi, Zabana, Boudiaf, Abane Ramdane, Hamou Boutlilis, the Soummam, the Ouarsenis, Djebel Llouh, Ali la Pointe, the names of places and of heroes of a populist movement that I had never for a moment suspected was so sincere, so committed.
Was I trying to compensate for the defection of my friends . . . ?
I went to Fabrice’s house up on the cliff road. He seemed happy to see me, but I could not bear Hélène’s aloofness. I never set foot in their house again. Whenever I ran into him, we would go to a café or a restaurant, but I politely declined any invitations to their house. I had no intention of putting up with his wife’s snobbishness. I once said as much to him. ‘You’re imagining things, Jonas,’ Fabrice said, piqued. ‘What made you think Hélène doesn’t like you? She’s a city girl, that’s all, she’s not like the gir
ls round here. Oh, I admit she’s got some strange ideas, but that’s just the city in her . . .’ Even so, I did not go back to their house. I preferred to lose myself in the old quarters of Oran, in La Calère, around the Pasha Mosque and especially the Bey’s Palace, watching the boys squabbling at Raz-el-Ain. After a life of crippling shyness, I suddenly found myself shouting at referees at football matches, buying black-market tickets to bullfights to watch Luis Miguel Dominquin deal the death blow to a bull at Eckmühl arena. Suddenly I liked nothing better than the roar of the crowd; it kept me from brooding over things I did not want to think about. I became a keen fan of USMO, the Muslim football team. I went to boxing matches, and when a young Muslim boxer floored his opponent, I felt within myself a murderous rage I had never suspected. Their names were as intoxicating as a whiff of opium: Goudihb, Khalfi, Cherraka, the Sabbane brothers, Abdeslam, the extraordinary Moroccan. I barely recognised myself. Like a moth to a candle flame I was drawn to violence and to crowds. There could be no doubt: I was at war with myself.
Jean-Christophe married Isabelle at the end of the year. I found out the day after the wedding. No one had deigned to mention it to me, not even Simon, who – to his annoyance – had not been invited. Nor Fabrice, who had gone home at dawn so as not to have to apologise for I don’t know what. All this simply served to push me even further away from their world. It was appalling.
Jean-Christophe decided they should settle somewhere far from Río Salado. The village was not enough to satisfy his desire to make up for lost time; to atone for certain memories. Pépé Rucillio gave them a beautiful house in one of the most fashionable areas of Oran. I was on the village square when the newly-weds left. André drove them to the city in his car, with a huge truck filled with furniture and wedding gifts following behind. Even today, though I am an old man now, I can still hear the horns blaring as the car moved off; still feel the pain I felt that day. And yet, strangely, I was relieved to see them go; it was as though some major artery in my body, long blocked, was suddenly clear again.
People were leaving Río Salado in droves. I felt like a castaway adrift on an empty ocean. The streets, the vineyards and the orange groves, the gossip in the cafés, the farmers’ jokes, none of it meant anything to me now. Every morning I woke up eager for night to come so that I could retreat from the chaos of the day; every night I went to bed dreading the fact that I would wake again to this terrible emptiness. I began to leave Germaine to run the pharmacy and spent my time in the brothels of Oran. I never touched the prostitutes; I just listened to them recount their turbulent lives and pour scorn on their shattered dreams. I was comforted by their contempt for illusion. To tell the truth, I was looking for Hadda. Suddenly, for some reason, she mattered to me. I wanted to find her again, to find out if she still remembered me, to see if she knew anything that might help me find my mother. But even in this, I was lying to myself: Hadda had left Jenane Jato before the fire that had destroyed our old house. She could not possibly help me find my mother. But that was what I had planned to say to her to win her sympathy. I needed a friend, a confidant, someone I had known long ago, anyone who could offer me a feeling of closeness now that my friends in Río Salado had vanished.
The madame who ran the Camélia told me that Hadda had gone off with a pimp one night and never come back. I managed to track down the pimp – a hulking thug with hairy arms covered with tattoos of pierced hearts and profanities. He warned me not to get involved unless I wanted to end up in the obituary column of the local paper. That same day, stepping off a tram, I thought I saw my childhood friend Lucette walking with a baby in a pram – a chubby young woman in a trouser suit and a white canvas hat. But it could not have been Lucette – she would have seen my smile, recognised something in the blue of my eyes. In spite of her eloquent indifference, I followed this woman along the boulevard, then, realising that what I was doing was somehow indecent, I turned back.
It was then that I came face to face with war . . . with the terrible reality of war, the succubus of Death, the fertile concubine of Disaster, this truth I had not wanted to face. I had read the newspaper reports of bombings in towns and villages, of police raids on douars suspected of harbouring FLN supporters, of the thousands of people displaced, the deadly clashes, the manhunts, the massacres, but to me it had been like a fiction that never seemed to end. Then, one day, as I was sitting on the seafront sipping an orange juice, a large black car pulled up, machine guns bristling from the windows. The gunfire lasted only a few seconds before it was drowned out by the squeal of tyres, but the shots kept ringing in my head for a long time. Bodies lay sprawled on the pavement opposite, while onlookers ran for safety. The silence was so total that the cries of the seagulls drilled into my temples. It was like I was dreaming. I stared at the broken bodies and I started to tremble. My hand juddered like a shutter in the wind, splashing me with orange juice; the glass fell and shattered at my feet and someone at the next table screamed. People stumbled from shops and offices, from their cars, shocked and dazed. A woman fainted in her friend’s arms. I didn’t dare to move. I sat, open-mouthed, heart hammering in my chest, frozen in my chair. The police arrived in a blast of whistles. Soon, a crowd had gathered around the victims: three people were dead – among them a young girl – and five more gravely wounded.
I went back to Río Salado, locked myself in my room and did not come out for two days.
For months, I couldn’t sleep. From the moment I got into bed, I felt a terrible dread pulling me under, it was like tumbling into an abyss. I dared not let myself fall asleep: my dreams were grotesque and bloody nightmares. When I could no longer bear to stare at the ceiling, I sat up, put my head in my hands and stared at the floor. My feet left bloody prints, gunshots ricocheted through my head – it was useless to stop my ears, because I could still hear them, deadly, deafening, my body jolting with each shot. I left my bedside light on until morning to try to keep these ghosts at bay. The slightest rustle, the smallest sound, every creak of the woodwork, seemed loud enough to split my skull.
‘You’re in shock,’ the doctor told me. This was something I already knew. What I needed to know was how to get over it, but he had no magic cure to offer. He prescribed tranquillisers and sleeping pills, but they did not help. I was depressed. I knew I was lost, but I had no idea how to find myself again. It was as though I was a different person, an infuriating, disappointing yet indispensable person whose body was my only home.
I constantly felt claustrophobic and would go out and stand on the balcony. Sometimes Germaine would come and keep me company. She tried to talk to me but I didn’t listen. Listening to her exhausted me and aggravated my anxiety. I needed to be alone. So I went out – night after night, week after week. The silence in the village did me good. I liked to stroll through the deserted square, wander up and down the main street, sit on a bench and think about nothing.
One moonless night as I stood thinking on the pavement, I saw a bicycle lamp weaving in the distance, the rattle of the bicycle chain echoing from the walls in a thousand high-pitched whimpers. It was Madame Cazenave’s gardener. When he saw me, he braked hard, almost sending himself over the handlebars. Pale and dishevelled, he kept pointing back the way he had come, unable to speak. Then he climbed back on to his bike and, in his hurry to ride off, hit the kerb and fell backwards.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Shaking, he got to his feet, climbed back on his bicycle and managed to stammer:
‘I’m going to the police . . . something terrible has happened at the Cazenave house.’
It was then that I noticed the huge reddish glow behind the Jewish cemetery. ‘Oh my God,’ I screamed, and started to run.
The house was on fire, great flames lighting up the surrounding orchards. I cut through the cemetery, and as I came closer to the house, I realised the scale of the catastrophe. Fire was raging though the ground floor and was already threatening the first floor. Simon’s ca
r stood burning in the driveway, but I could see no sign of him or of Émilie. The gates were open. The climbing vine on the trellis crackled and blazed. I had to shield my face to breach the wall of fire and get to the fountain. In the courtyard, two dogs lay dead. It was impossible to reach the house, which was now an inferno. Flames licked the walls, shooting out like tentacles. I tried to call to Simon, but no sound came from my parched throat. A woman sat huddled under a tree. It was the gardener’s wife. Hands clapped to her face, she stared trancelike at the house as it burned.
‘Where’s Simon?’
She turned and pointed up the hill to the old stables. I plunged into the blaze, deafened by the crack of burning wood and shattering windows. The hill was cloaked in thick, acrid smoke; the old stables were shrouded in a silence even more terrifying than the cataclysm behind me. In the distance I saw a body lying face down on the grass, arms crossed, illuminated by the distant flickering flames. My knees locked. I realised I was utterly alone, and I did not feel I could face this thing without someone to help me. I waited, hoping the gardener’s wife would follow me, but she did not move. I could hear only the roar of the fire, see only the body lying before me. Motionless and naked but for a pair of underpants, it lay in a pool of blood so black it looked like pitch. I recognised the bald head: it was Simon! This surely was some nightmare; I was at home, asleep . . . But a graze on my arm throbbed, reminding me that I was awake. The body gleamed in the glow of the fire. The face looked as though it had been carved from a block of chalk; there was no light in the eyes. Simon was dead.
I crouched down next to the body of my friend. I was in a daze. I no longer knew what I was doing, what I was thinking. Automatically, I reached out to the body as if to wake him.
‘Don’t touch him!’ a voice screamed out of the darkness.
Émilie was crouched by a corner of the stable. Her face was so pale it seemed luminous. Her eyes burned with a fire as vast as the flames behind me. Her hair spilled down her back. She was barefoot and wearing only a silk night-dress, which somehow made her seem more naked. Her son Michel huddled against her.
What the day owes the nigth Page 25