by Alexis Jenni
‘And I haven’t noticed?’
‘But I remember everything. Would you like me to tell you the story of our life together?’
‘Go ahead. I’ll tell you afterwards whether I like it, this life I have no part in.’
‘You have a part in it.’
‘Without my knowledge.’
‘Does anyone really know their whole life? What we know are only a few trees in a clearing in a dark forest. Our lives are always more vast.’
‘So, tell me.’
‘I don’t know where to begin. I’ve never approached someone like this. Nor have I ever lived so long alongside someone without their knowing. I’ve always waited for something beyond my control to connect me to the woman I desire, for something that was already there, outside me, to empower me to take the hand of a woman that I want to be with. But I know nothing about you. We run into each other by accident, something I find infinitely reassuring. That recurring coincidence creates a story. How many meetings does it take for a story to begin? I have to tell you.’
I told her about them, these encounters. I began with the first, when I was dazzled by her colour. She listened to me. She told me her name. She agreed to see me again. She kissed me on the cheek with a smile that made me melt. I went home. I longed to write to her.
I all but ran home. I hurtled up the staircase, which seemed to me too long. I struggled with the lock, which resisted. I dropped my keys. I was trembling with frustration. Eventually, I managed to open the door. I slammed it behind me, ripped of my jacket, my shoes. I sat down at the wooden table I used for everything and which I had always known would one day serve as a writing desk. Finally, I began to write to her. I knew that talking to her would not be enough to hold her. Only sheets of paper saturated with verbs might keep her for a time. I wrote the words. I wrote to her. I wrote letters pages and pages long that weighed down the envelopes. These were not passionate letters. I told her a story, my story, her story. I recounted my every step in Lyon. I described her presence, which glowed like phosphorescence on the things I encountered in the streets. I described Lyon with her, me walking, her presence all around me like an incandescent gas. I wrote in a sort of fever, in an irrational exaltation, but what I wrote had the gentleness of a portrait, a smiling portrait with a sweeping landscape as a backdrop. The portrait depicted what I saw of her; she was looking at me; the landscape in the background was the city where we lived together, painted entirely in her colours. She was eager to see me again. She had read my letters; she had enjoyed reading them. I felt relieved. ‘All this for me?’ she smiled softly. ‘This is just the beginning,’ I told her. ‘This is the least of it.’ She heaved a sigh and this air she fed me, this oxygen, turned my flame into a roaring blaze.
But mostly I wanted to paint her, since it would be an easier way to show her to herself. I marvelled at her appearance, the flowing movement she constantly radiated. I marvelled at her body, which inscribed itself in the figure of an almond, in the shape I saw when I laid both hands flat on the table, palms open, fingers touching.
I believe I could have traced her silhouette with a single brushstroke. Contemplating her filled my soul. Out of politeness, one should prefer the individual to the form, but the individual cannot be seen except through form. Her body delighted my soul through anagoge and I ardently longed to paint her, since this would show her, name her, assert her presence and thereby bring us together.
I loved the curve one had to trace to circumscribe her body, from the feet scarcely touching the ground, to the silvered cloud of feathers that wreathed her face. I loved the curve of her shoulder, which welcomed the curve of my arm. Above all I loved her face, the vivid line of her nose, the peremptory line that shaped the beauty of her features. The nose is the marvel of the human face; it is the idea that, with a single stroke, brings together the disparate details, the eyes, the eyebrows, the lips, even the delicate ears. There are feeble ideas and vulgar ideas, ridiculous ideas and insipid ideas; there are amusing ideas, ideas that are quickly sapped and those that are essential and endure for ever. The Mediterranean contribution to the universal beauty of women is the arrogance of the nose, unapologetically traced, the gesture of a matador; something that should be translatable into all the languages that ring this sea that was once ours.
I marvelled at her, marvelled at her appearance, and more than anything I longed to inscribe that body in almond shape formed by a pair of hands laid flat, fingers touching. And this I did.
Novel VI
Trifid, hexagonal, dodecahedral war; self-consuming monster
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LEAVE ALGIERS just like that. The sea cannot be crossed so easily. You cannot do it alone: you must find a space. It is impossible to leave Algiers independently, on foot, walking through the countryside, slipping between the bushes. No. It is impossible. There are no bushes, there is no countryside, there is only the water, the impassable sea; to leave Algiers means finding a space on a boat or a plane. From the railings above the port you can look out at the sea and the horizon. But to get beyond requires a ship, a ticket, an exit visa.
Victorien Salagnon spent several days waiting for his ship to leave. When he stared out at the sea he felt the whole weight of the country behind weighing down on him. The bloody, shrieking mass of Algiers behind him rumbled, sliding like a glacier into the water, while he focused on the sea, on the flat horizon he longed to cross; he wanted to leave.
In the grey early hours of the previous summer a number of colonial paratroopers in a jeep turned on to the avenue de la République, overlooking the port. The boulevard has only one side; the other is the sea. They pulled to a stop and clambered down, stretching, strolled over to the stone balustrade and leaned over. They watched the grey sea turn pink.
When a jeep full of men in combat fatigues pulls up on the pavement, people make themselves scarce. The soldiers jump down, they run, they dash into a building, take stairs four at a time, kick down doors and re-emerge with men, dragging men, who struggle to keep up. But this morning, in the grey dawn light of their last summer there, they casually stepped down from the jeep and stretched themselves. Each of the five paratroopers in battledress moved slowly, unhurriedly, his sleeves rolled up, hands in his pockets, as if he were alone; they did not say a word, but walked with a weary nonchalance. They came to the balustrade overlooking the quayside and, spaced several metres apart, they rested their elbows on the rail. Heavy smoke hung in the streets. From time to time an explosion shook the air, glass fell tinkling to the ground. Flames roared from the shattered windows of the buildings. They gazed out at the sea as it flushed red.
Propped against the railing, they stayed for a moment, revelling in the coolness that came only with morning, staring vaguely into the distance, dreaming of being beyond the horizon as soon as possible, silent, feeling an exhaustion in the very depths of their being, as though, after a long sleepless night, several sleepless nights, several years of sleepless nights, suffering, while suffering the mother of all hangovers in a devastated Algiers.
All of it had been for nothing. All the blood had been for nothing. It had been spilled in vain and now it was impossible to staunch the flow; blood coursed down the steep streets of Algiers, rivers of it flowed into the sea, spreading over the water in a putrid slick. In the morning, as the sun rose, the sea turned red. The paratroopers leaning on the balustrade above the port watched it redden and darken to become a pool of blood. Behind them, fires roared through the broken windows of all the buildings destroyed in the course of the night; black smoke crept through the streets; from everywhere came screams, the sound of brutish passions, hatred, anger, fear, pain, and sirens wailed through the city, the miraculous sirens of the last remaining emergency services still functioning for no apparent reason. Then, finally, the sun broke free of the horizon, the sea turned blue, the heat began to rise; the paratroopers walked back to the jeep parked on the pavement that passers-by fearfully avoided. It had all been for nothing.
Eve
ntually, they left in a huge ship. They had packed, stuffing everything into the cylindrical kitbags that were impractical but easy to carry. They were driven through the city in covered trucks from which they could see nothing much. They did not want to see anything. Algiers was in flames; its walls were crumbling under the impact of bullets; pools of blood coagulated on the pavements. Cars with their doors wide open lay abandoned in the middle of the street; shop windows gaped on to shards of broken glass, but there was no looting. They marched up the gangway of the ship in strict formation, something they had often done, although it felt that they were doing so for the last time. They felt that this had all been for nothing, that they had served for nothing, that they would not serve again.
When they left and the ship pulled away from the quay, many of them holed up below deck so they could see nothing, could allow themselves to be deafened by the roar of the engines and sleep at long last; others remained on deck and watched as Algiers receded, the port, the jetty, the Casbah like a melting icecap that poured forth blood, the bustle on the quays and the crowds lining the waterfront. Algiers was receding, but still they could hear the screams of harkis having their throats cut. This is what they thought, harkis having their throats cut, but this was simply to maintain a certain propriety, a certain tact. But they knew all too well, having lived in this country of blood, they knew that the screams rising from the milling crowds were those of harkis being dismembered, being castrated, being burned alive as they watched through a mist of bloody tears, their own tears, their own blood, the ships sail away. Those leaving told themselves that the screams they could hear were those of harkis whose throats were being cut; they did so to reassure themselves, so as not to conjure other images, grisly images that would keep them awake for ever. But they knew. From a distance, such things do not matter. Man is merely a certain capacity for screaming: once reached, it does not matter whether his throat is being cut or his skin is being hacked off piece by piece with carpentry tools. The colonial paratroopers on the deck of the ship, watching Algiers recede, preferred, out of politeness, to think their throats were being cut, these men they could hear screaming; that it might be over quickly, for the harkis, and for them, too.
In the middle of the Mediterranean, as the ship chugged towards France to the muffled pounding of the engines, Victorien Salagnon sat on deck, in the middle of the night, and wept for the first and last time in his life; he emptied himself of all the tears he had been accumulating for too long. He wept for his humanity as it drained away, for the masculinity he had never quite mastered and had been unable to save. When finally the dawn broke, he saw a sunlit Marseille. He was exhausted and his eyes were dry.
And yet things had started out so well. They had arrived in Algiers in mid-winter, the cruel Mediterranean winter, when the sun slinks behind a wind as grey and sharp as a steel blade. They had marched through the streets of the European quarter, led by Josselin de Trambassac, who was magnificently stiff, magnificently precise in every gesture, magnificently strong. Victorien Salagnon marched through the streets at the head of his men, through the streets of a European quarter that looked like Lyon, like Marseille, inhabited by French people who cheered them on. They marched slowly, the whole division of colonial paratroopers, their battledress immaculate, their sleeves rolled up, their jaws clenched in smiles like statues, their bodies lithe and athletic, all marching in step. They would win this time. They were entering the city. They could do anything they wanted in order to win. They could do anything they wanted as long as they won.
On a January day of wintry sunlight they had entered Algiers. They had marched together through the streets to great cheers from European crowds, agile, limber and invincible, free from all misgivings, hardened by the most terrible war imaginable. They had survived. They survived everything. They would win. Together they were a war machine devoid of scruples, and Salagnon was one of the pilots of that machine, pack leader, centurion, a guide of young men who placed their trust in him; and, as they marched through the streets, the French inhabitants of Algiers cheered them. The French inhabitants. Were there any others? There were none to be seen.
Bombs went off in Algiers. Constantly. Anything could explode: a bar stool, an abandoned rucksack, a bus stop. When people heard a bomb in the distance, they flinched, but for a few minutes they felt relieved. They sighed. Then their hearts began to hammer again, another might explode right here; and they carried on down the street as though a chasm might open up, as though at any moment the ground might disappear. People avoided an Arab man carrying a bag; shunned a woman wearing a white veil that might hide something; they wished they would stop moving, wanted to slaughter them all, perhaps, wanted nothing to change. Anyone who could not be judged at a glance by their physical features and their dress elicited a shudder of unease. People crossed the street for no better reason that a person’s appearance. Resemblance, it seemed, could save lives. No one knew what to do; this was why they had been called in. They would know, the lean wolves freshly returned from Indochine; they had survived; people trusted their strength.
They set up camp in a distinguished Moorish villa above Algiers. It included a vast basement, tiny rooms with barred windows, an attic that had been converted into soundproof cells, a large ceremonial hall that had once been a ballroom to which Josselin de Trambassac summoned his officers, who listened to him, hands clasped behind their backs, standing ‘at ease’ in military parlance, which should not be confused with at ease. A bomb exploded in the distance.
‘You are paratroopers, messieurs, you are soldiers. I know that you are worthy. But war is changing. It is no longer a matter of leaping from a plane or running through the jungle, it is about knowledge. In the days of Agincourt, to use a bow, to kill at a distance, was incompatible with chivalric honour. The knights of France were slaughtered by thugs armed with longbows. You are the new knights of France. You can refuse to use the weapons of modern warfare, but if you do, you will be slaughtered.
‘We have the power. We have been entrusted with a mission to win. We could, like American pilots, annihilate those areas of Algiers sheltering the enemy. But that would be pointless. They would rise from the rubble. They would wait for a period of calm and, in increased numbers, they would attack again. Those whom we are fighting do not hide, but we do not know who they are. If we pass them in the street, they may salute. If we talk to them they may not seem hostile, but they are waiting. They hide behind their faces, inside their bodies. We must flush out the enemy behind those faces. You will find them. You will subject the guilty to intense interrogation using recognized methods we all find distasteful. But you will win. Are you aware of who you are? Then we cannot lose.’
He concluded his short speech with a little laugh. A smile flickered on the faces of these lean, angular men. They all saluted, clicked their heels, and went back to makeshift offices furnished with school tables scattered all over the Moorish villa. In the ceremonial hall Josselin de Trambassac had an organizational chart in which empty boxes were linked to each other by arrows to form a pyramid.
‘This is the enemy camp, its battle array,’ he announced. ‘You will need to put a name in each box and arrest every one of them. That is all. When all the boxes have been filled, the unmasked army will disappear.’
This appealed to Mariani. He no longer read much. The vast knowledge he had acquired from books he devoted to filling in the chart. He treated men like words. He wrote down names, rubbed them out, working with a pencil and a rubber. And in the real world, like a bloody simulacrum of the synoptic world of the whiteboard, they seized bodies, manipulated them, extracted names and then discarded them.
How to find people? Man is a zoon politikon, he does not live in isolation; someone is always known to others. They would be harpoon-fishing in murky waters, plunging the weapon in at random to see what floated to the surface. Each catch would lead to others. Capitaine Salagnon and two armed men presented themselves at the police headquarters. They demanded the
surveillance records on the Arab population. The official in shirtsleeves did not want to hand them over. ‘These are confidential documents, they belong to the police.’ ‘You either give them to me or I take them,’ said Salagnon. His pistol was in the holster hanging from his belt; he was standing with his hands behind his back. The two men flanking him held their sub-machine guns at their hips. The man in the shirtsleeves gestured to a shelf and they left with wooden boxes filled with files.
In them they found the names and addresses of all those who had come to police attention. There were crooks, agitators, union members; there were men who, at some point, had indicated nationalist sympathies, a willingness to act, a rebellious spirit. All of the files were written in the conditional tense. Since there was a shortage of informers, a shortage of police officers, they relied on hearsay. All of the ferment in Algiers was contained within these boxes.
They brought the individuals named in the files to the Moorish villa to ask them why the bombs were exploding. Who was setting them? If they did not know, they were asked the name of someone who did know; he was then brought to the villa and the process started over. The paratroopers’ mission was to know, and they applied themselves to it. They were relentless in their interrogations. In the jungle of the body, they hunted, they set ambushes, they tracked the enemy. When a man resisted, they destroyed him. Some of those who gave up information were never seen again.
Day and night, jeeps hummed around the villa. Men were brought in, dressed in pyjamas, stupefied, terrified, handcuffed, sometimes bloodied or bruised, goaded on by the paratroopers, who ran everywhere. Everything moved quickly. When a name was given up in the basement of the Moorish villa, a jeep would set off at top speed carrying four paratroopers dressed in fatigues; it would careen down the winding roads and stop outside a building; the officers would jump down before the jeep came to a halt, rush inside, dash up the stairs and re-emerge, dragging one or two men, who were bundled into the jeep, its engine still idling. They would drive back to the Moorish villa sitting in the same seats, although crouching at their feet now were one or two men whose backs alone were visible. Back at the villa, they tried to find out why the bombs were exploding. They ruthlessly interrogated and then another jeep carrying four paratroopers in fatigues would set off in a squeal of tyres and come back within the hour, bringing more men, from whom they tried to drag more information, at any price. And so on. Once a name was given, the man was brought back by jeep within an hour by four men in fatigues and he, in turn, was interrogated in the same basement where his name had been given up. Language acted on matter; only French was spoken. In the morning, officers would come up from the basement with a pencil and a crumpled, sometimes stained notepad. They would go into the ceremonial hall, where the rising sun streamed through the tall windows, illuminating the huge organizational chart. They would stop in the doorway of the great hall, then approach the chart and fill in certain boxes, copying from the pages of their notebooks. Salagnon watched as each day, box by box, the chart filled up with the regularity of a printing process. When it was full, this would all be over.