by Alexis Jenni
Civilians now only reluctantly came into his office to get figures. Trambassac would be standing waiting for them in pristine battle-dress and, behind him, the imperturbable heroes would look down on the newcomer; he would set out his figures, magnificent, impressive figures: the number of terrorists eliminated, the list of bombs recovered. He would flourish marvellously clear organizational charts. Teitgen held him to account, he brought his sheaves of arrest warrants. Behind his thick glasses he did not tremble; he made his calculations and showed the results to Trambassac. ‘If my calculations are accurate, Colonel, there are two hundred and twenty men missing from your figures. What has become of them?’
‘Well, they’ve disappeared, these men of yours.’
‘Where?’
‘If anyone asks you, you can tell them that Trambassac takes full responsibility.’
Teitgen did not tremble, not from fear, nor from disgust; he never lost heart. From behind his thick glasses he looked the world straight in the eye, the colonel in front of him, the hecatomb of ink inscribed on the walls, the figures that were traces of the dead. He was alone in keeping count of people. Eventually, he resigned and publicly gave his reasons. It was easy to think him ridiculous, with his manner and his forms to be filled in. He looked like a frog demanding answers from a pack of wolves, but he was a frog gifted with superhuman strength, whose words were not his own but an expression of what should be. Throughout the Battle of Algiers he held the post of frog-god before the Gates of Hell: he weighed the souls and noted everything in the Book of the Dead. It is easy to mock him, this little man who suffered from the heat, who peered through his thick spectacles, who worried about forms being filled, while others were in blood up to their elbows, but it is possible to marvel at him as at the animal gods of Egypt and to worship him discreetly.
‘Mariani is out of sorts. Have a word with him. I’m putting him on enforced leave for three days. You too. Go and find him. I don’t know where the hell he is. When you go too far, there’s no knowing where it will end.’
The streets of Algiers are more agreeable than those of Saigon; the heat here is dry; it is possible to shelter from the sun; cafés line the streets like shady grottos full of life and chatter; from a table on the pavement one can watch the passers-by. Mariani and Salagnon sat down at a table; in uniform, they risked being gunned down, but they showed themselves. Mariani took off the sunglasses he always wore. His eyes were red and glazed, stupefied by insomnia.
‘You don’t look so good.’
‘I’m tired.’
They watched the evening crowd stroll along the rue de la Lyre.
‘I can’t stand all these fucking ragheads. They hate us. When we pass them in the street, their only expression is servility; but murderers are hiding behind those faces. And you, Salagnon, you’ve abandoned us. You spend all your time doing the schoolkid stuff, that girl’s stuff. You were always doodling in Indochine, too, but at least you could do other things.’
‘I don’t like the work, Mariani.’
‘So what? I liked it better in the mountains, too, but the enemy is here. We’ve nearly done it. We’ve got them on the run. Are you with us or not?’
‘I’ve got no problem hunting men down, but it bothers me, them being in pyjamas. And as for what we do to them back at the villa, I can’t hack it any more.’
‘I don’t know who you are any more, Salagnon.’
‘Neither do I, Mariani.’
They fell silent. They watched people passing, sipped their anisette, then picked up again. Salagnon could not identify the thoughts flitting across Mariani’s face as it quivered like laundry in the wind. All of a sudden he was composed again.
‘I’ve been told to exterminate rats, so I’m just executing orders; well, actually, I’m executing others,’ he snickered. His face was confident now, callous. He was not looking at anyone, not even Salagnon. ‘I’m happy here,’ he went on. ‘I don’t want to have to leave. This is home.’
‘We’ll have to go back sooner or later. And we’ve changed. What will become of us back in France?’
‘France will have to change.’
He had come to Algiers because a decision had been taken in Paris that he and his kind should be sent here. It had been decided to use brute force, and no force was more brutish than the lean wolves who had trained in the jungle. They had come here on a slow boat; they crossed the pale blue January sea, had watched Algiers grow larger on the horizon. He had stepped on to the quay, being careful not to think about Eurydice. Working day and night he no longer had time to write to her, but, overwhelmed by exhaustion and horror, steeped in other men’s blood, silently, almost unbeknown to himself, he continued to think about her.
He did not look for her. It was Salomon who found him. They ran into each other on the threshold of the Moorish villa. The sun had barely risen. Salomon Kaloyannis was coming up the steps strewn with dead palm fronds and sand that no one thought to sweep away. He was wearing a black trilby and carrying a doctor’s bag. Salagnon was running out, machine gun slung over his shoulder, the jeep waiting for him idling at the foot of the steps. Both men stopped, surprised to see the other here, in this place that everyone believed they alone knew, where everyone believed they were absolutely alone, that everyone believed they had to roam alone, regardless of their purpose.
The jeep’s engine growled. The other three paratroopers were already installed, feet on the dashboard, legs dangling out of the windows, hanging on to the slatted sides, sub-machine guns slung over their shoulders. Salagnon had scrawled addresses and names in his chest pocket.
‘Come and see me, Victorien. Come and see Eurydice. She would like that.’
‘Is she married?’ Salagnon asked. It was the first thought that occurred to him. It was the only thing he could think to say, there on the steps of the Moorish villa, something he had not thought about before.
‘Yes. To a guy who used to make her laugh, but now just bores her. I think she misses you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. He came back during the time of the swashbucklers. Though I’m not sure that ever ended. Come and see me some day when you’ve got time.’
He stepped into the Moorish villa, lugging his bag. Salagnon leapt into the jeep, which instantly roared off. They hurtled down the hill towards Algiers, almost throwing themselves clear at every hairpin bend. ‘Faster! Faster!’ muttered Capitaine Salagnon, hanging on to the windshield, savouring the bright sun as it rose, lighting up Algiers harbour below, the white buildings and the ships moored on the quays.
The past twelve years had marked Salomon Kaloyannis, these twelve years particularly.
‘Every year is like a heavy stone in my pack,’ he explained, ‘and every year the stone is bigger. The years weigh me down. I’m stooped over. The stones I gather drag me down. I’m not even able to stand up straight. Look at my lips, the way they droop at the corners, and even when I do manage to lift them it looks less and less like a smile. I am no longer funny, Victorien, and I no longer find anything around me funny. I feel as if I’m being corroded by rust, like a light flickering out. I’m aware of it. I try to turn myself on again, but there’s nothing I can do.
‘What I do up at the villa? I quantify pain. I tell the men in the cellars whether they need to stop for a while or whether they can carry on. Distinguish between a loss of consciousness and certain death. This is war, Victorien. I was a medical doctor. I was with the army in Germany. I can read the signs. I know when someone is dying. Why me? Why should a little doctor from Bab el Oued be coming to the villa with my little doctor’s bag? Why should I help you do things that you will never dare tell your children? I fear their violence, Victorien. I have seen them cut off noses, ears, cut out tongues. I have seen them slash throats, eviscerate, disembowel. This is not a figure of speech, a rhetorical expression. I have watched young men I knew by sight become murderers and justify their acts. Their fury terrifies me. All the more so because I know the supply of cut-throats is
inexhaustible, because of the flagrant injustices in the colony. It was only fear that stopped them from killing us. They killed each other. But now they have no fear. We are the ones who are afraid. I was afraid, Victorien. And now they are setting off bombs everywhere. They can explode everywhere. They can destroy what I hold most dear. I know that we need more justice, but the bombs make it impossible to change, the bombs leave us frozen in terror. My daughter’s life is much dearer to me than any idea of justice, Victorien. I have come to shelter behind your strength. You have become the finest soldiers in the world. You will make this stop. If you cannot, no one can.’
He fell silent. He raised his glass. Salagnon did likewise and they sipped their anisette. They nibbled at some pickled carrots and lupin beans. Crowds passed in both directions, coming up from the place des Trois Horloges and heading on to Bouzaréah.
‘But even so, I think you’re making too much of this,’ he said gently.
Salagnon saw her. Though the streets of Bab el Oued are seething with people, teeming with beautiful, dark-haired women in flowery dresses so light they float around the hips, flutter up at every step as they move like a breeze through tall grass, trailing a wake of perfume and shy glances, he saw her, a tiny figure walking towards them, growing very slowly in his eye, close to the innermost part of his being. He knew it was her. There was no proof. He had simply known the moment the distant figure appeared in the crowd, and that barely visible silhouette, that and that alone, he followed with his eyes. My memory is marvellous and she is coming, he thought quickly, his words confused, his thoughts muddled. I remember a beauty that dazzled me, that dazzled me so much I could scarcely see it, my eyes burned, my face burned, my body was on fire, and she is come, she will be here in front of me and I will realize that she is just a woman with a face marked by twelve more years, twelve years in which I have not seen her; a drab woman, a woman with sagging flesh, a woman whose face I will find harmonious but older, her every wrinkle, every fold attesting to the faintly repulsive weight of real flesh. He saw her hips move towards him, saw the glow of her face, saw her lips part in a radiant smile meant only for him and she kissed him. He was dazzled. He could see nothing but this smile meant only for him, a smile that floated in a halo of light. A miracle was taking place. He found her beauty perfect, with no surplus, no shortfall.
‘You’ve hardly changed, Victorien. A little more broad, a little more handsome. Just the way I dared to hope you might be.’
He solemnly got to his feet, pulled out a chair and had her sit next to him. Their legs nestled together, as though they had never been apart, and each contained within itself the form of the other. She fits me perfectly, like a coat I’ve worn for years, he thought, still confused. Her face dazzles me. It radiates beauty and I cannot seem to see her as flesh and blood. She moves me, that is all. She is just as she is in my soul. And when she looks at me with that smile of hers, it makes me sigh with relief. I am home. She takes up the precise same space as my soul; or perhaps my soul is a dress and I fit her perfectly. The beauty I could make out from a distance was like a portent. Eurydice, my soul, here I am before you once more.
Eurydice found a place in the perfect space that was Victorien’s heart. Everything about her, her eyes, her voice, her face, her whole body radiated the same glow that had suffused him twelve years ago and throughout the twelve years since. ‘How she dazzles me,’ he murmured, a half-articulated mumble only Salomon heard. Everything was moving so fast, everything. He felt himself choke. The words would not come. He could not say anything. Thankfully, Salomon kept the conversation going, beaming, recovering his volubility.
He talked of everything and nothing, lectured, laughed, greeted passers-by, teased his daughter, who did not respond, but stared hungrily at the handsome Victorien, studying his face, older now, sanded by time. Kaloyannis could see this and he left her to her contemplation, while he questioned Capitaine Salagnon about his travels, his adventures, his achievements, and Victorien responded clumsily, confusedly, talking about jungles, ravines, the night-time escape through the waterlogged forest. He unspooled his memories, showing them off as he might send a series of postcards. He could do nothing but show off his collection, since his mind was entirely focused on studying Eurydice’s face, brushing against her legs beneath the table, legs whose skin, whose curve, whose heft he remembered better than if they had been his own.
Eurydice’s husband arrived, warmly greeted everyone, sat down and immediately joined the conversation. He was brilliant, the perfect foil for Salomon. A dramatically handsome man with dark, curly hair, his bright white shirt open to reveal his tanned chest, he rivalled Salomon’s virtuosity, effortlessly coming out with a torrent of words that were intelligent and droll, but deafened more than they convinced, stated or even charmed. The best thing to do, when listening to him, was to respond with exaggerated gestures and to laugh a lot. It was a sport at which Salomon excelled, quickly outdistancing Salagnon, who rapidly became breathless and simply watched.
He was very handsome, the dark-haired man who fed on the sun, who employed language like a musical instrument. But the first moment Victorien set eyes on him, at the moment he stopped at their table and bent down to greet them, proffering his hand, flashing a luminous smile, he wondered what Eurydice was doing with him. What he was doing with her, Victorien readily understood. Eurydice was the cherished treasure of Salomon Kaloyannis, a wonder that one could not but desire; but he was not her equal. This was precisely what Victorien was thinking as he shook the man’s hand and gave him the fine, confident smile of a parachute officer. Privately, he dismissed him. He is out of place, he thought simply. He is out of place in this place that belongs to me. But in the long conversation that followed, punctuated by jokes, shouts, greetings to passers-by and laughter, in this pataouète piece of theatre being performed al fresco near the place de Trois Horloges, Salagnon said little. He did not have the time. He was not quick enough. He did not know how to slip in a witty remark just when the others were catching their breath. He did not know how to embellish trivial nothings with sound and fury. While the father and the husband were performing, he was watching Eurydice, and Eurydice gradually felt herself blush.
She remembered the letters, the sketches, the long, one-sided conversation he had kept up for twelve years, and the soft hairs of his ink brush caressed her soul, made her skin prickle. In this strange Algiers where language was street theatre, painting was not visual at all; it was silent, slow and tactile.
When they went their separate ways, the husband vigorously shook Victorien’s hand and invited him to come and visit; Eurydice nodded, embarrassed. They walked off together, a handsome couple. Victorien heard him say – his voice carried and Salagnon’s keen ear had been honed in the jungle, or perhaps the husband intended him to hear – ‘They’re poseurs, those fellows, that’s the word for them, poseurs, with their swords and their uniforms. They strut around in their ridiculous helmets and tight trousers, but when you sit down with them, face to face, they haven’t got a thing to say.’
He slipped his arm around Eurydice’s shoulders as silently as a stone and they melted into the crowds of Bab el Oued. Victorien watched until he could see nothing, hear nothing. He went on sitting, unmoving, his eyes still fixed on the point where they vanished into the human jungle of Algiers.
‘Beautiful woman, my daughter, huh?’ Salomon said, slapping his thigh with an enthusiasm so charming it brought a smile from Salagnon.
His uncle was waiting for him outside the villa in a jeep parked on the driveway. He was smoking and staring into space, half sprawled across the seat, one arm hanging out of the window. Finally, Salagnon appeared, kissed him on the cheek and slid into the passenger seat. The uncle flicked the cigarette over his shoulder and turned the key in the ignition, without a word. He drove him to a little café in the hills that overlooked the bay of Algiers. Pine trees shaded the terrace; outcrops of limestone sprouted between the trees, even in winter; this was the Medit
erranean coast. The café owner, a pot-bellied pied noir with a patter so typical it was clearly rehearsed, would offer a round of anisette on the house to paratroopers who regularly frequented his establishment. With an apron hugging his ample paunch, he would come out from behind the bar and personally serve, loudly dispensing advice and encouragement, rapping the flat of his hand on the table to underscore his point. ‘We need to show those fucking bougnoules. Violence is the only language they understand. Let your guard down, they’ll smack you. Turn the other cheek and they’ll slit your throat. Turn your back on them and they’ll put a knife in it, and you’ll never see it coming. But look them in the eye and they don’t move. They stand stock still, like tree trunks. They can stand like that all day and not move a muscle. I often wonder what’s in their blood. Something cold and viscous, probably. Like lizards.’