by Simon Pare
“It was really tough, wasn’t it?” he whispers as he stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray.
“What? What was tough?” retorts an exhausted and bad-tempered Aziz. “You mean my daughter’s kidnapping? Or my wife’s grief? Think it could’ve been easy, do you?”
“No, of course not. I’m talking about the person… you were forced to kill…”
Aziz started as if he’d been bitten by a dog.
“What are you talking about, you old fool? I… I… Is it old age? Couldn’t find any better time to come out with such tripe?”
His son-in-law’s surprise is pretty well acted, but his facial expression, once the initial stupefaction – and the very real contraction of fear – has faded, is so false that Mathieu knows he isn’t mistaken. Exhausted from guessing correctly, he sighs, “There’s no point denying it, Aziz. Don’t worry, I’m not the police. And keep your voice down too – the women might hear us.”
“But I… I haven’t killed anyone… How dare you accuse me? In my own home, as well!”
With a somewhat disdainful smile, Mathieu waits for his son-in-law’s protests to cease.
“In any case, Aziz, he’s asked me to do the same.”
“What? He asked you to… to kill someone too?
Mathieu would cry with laughter if he didn’t feel instead like drowning in a lake of tears instead – his son-in-law’s amazement is so comical! What’s more, he’s completely given himself away with that too.
“Why stop when things are going so well? As it so happens, he’s ordered me to kill someone you know well.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“Oh?”
Aziz no longer bothers to fake surprise. Slumping down into a chair, he pulls Mathieu’s cigarette packet towards him and fiddles with it for a few seconds.
“He demands that I kill you by tomorrow morning, Mathieu.”
“Oh?” the father-in-law simply says, unwittingly adopting the Algerian’s tone of voice and exclamation.
“I’ll stab you, then you kill me before breathing your last. Or the other way round? Or should we arrange it so we stick our knives in each other’s bellies at exactly the same time? That lunatic must be having a whale of a time.”
He takes out a cigarette and studies the end of it far too closely.
“I’ve got to kill you, Mathieu, and of course I can’t kill you. But if I don’t carry out his orders, he’ll cut my daughter’s head off. He’s already amputated several of her fingers.”
“I know, Aziz. He told me over the phone… to put me off disobeying him. I’ve got to kill you too, Aziz. I’m much fonder of Shehera than you think. She’s my granddaughter, even if you won’t accept that.”
“Can you imagine the horror of it, Mathieu? Cutting off a teenage girl’s fingers as she screams in terror and pain? No child is born to go through an ordeal like that.”
The father studies the old man as if he were short-sighted.
“He suggested that you’d be able to explain why he’s attacking us. According to him, you only needed not to have completely lost your memory. I’m convinced now that he’s nothing to do with those GIA killers. It looks as if he’s operating on his own and he doesn’t act like a kidnapper who’s in this for a ransom. Just now you let slip that you might have something to do with the kidnapping, but you’ve been beating around the bush ever since. Out with it: is there any truth to his ramblings? But please, nothing melodramatic about the Algerian war. Right now, I don’t give a fuck about the Algerian war and its atrocities, its litany of bloody heroes and traitors. Get straight to the point: is there some connection between you and this criminal?”
He insisted sarcastically, “Cut to the chase, no mucking about. Maybe it’ll make things clearer? You and I have some decisions to take. Before tomorrow morning, if you recollect.”
Mathieu feels his chest contract once more. The old pump for circulating the blood is obviously complaining. With one hand resting tensely on his leg, the ex-soldier holds his breath until the biting pain in his plexus has faded.
“Well, this bastard is convinced that Tahar killed his whole family… I mean, not on his own, but along with other FLN maquisards when they took Melouza in 1957 and massacred most of the villagers.”
The Algerian opens his eyes wide in astonishment.
“Tahar, Meriem’s father, was a murderer? Were there any children among the victims?”
“No… yes… no… yes…”
Mathieu beseeches him – he would lie face down on the floor if he dared: “Just give me a little time to explain.”
Aziz cuts him off in the same ghostly voice. “And why’s he after you?”
“I saved Tahar’s life…”
“The life of a murderer, right? Didn’t you have anything better to do?”
“Listen to me, please. I promise you it’s not that simple.”
The whining inflexion of the words that come out of his mouth strikes him as grotesque, but another inner voice makes the stupid objection: But Aziz, if I hadn’t saved Tahar, you wouldn’t have married his daughter!
The father gets up from his chair with a look of total defeat.
“The kidnapper lost his whole family. He has the life of my daughter in his hands, but that probably isn’t enough for him. How many of his people were killed? I guess that’s all he’s being doing for the last fifty years, counting and recounting his dead! And you want me to listen to you? So you can explain what? That the rest of my family could well die because of some fucking atrocity half a century ago?”
The old man grabs his son-in-law’s arm.
“Hang on, Aziz. I am… ready.”
The Algerian shakes off his arm brusquely.
“Ready for what?”
Listen first, boy. The eagle of ultimate misery swoops down on the Breton fisherman’s son, who now knows that the thread of his life will definitely be severed before morning. Listen to me, the Tahar you knew was no murderer. Or, if he was, then he paid a high price for it. I, however, was – a murderer or worse – and I have yet to pay for it.
The father turns to Mathieu and the malicious expression on his lips shows fairly clearly that he is exasperated by the hangdog look on the face of the man who has claimed to be ‘ready’ and has since been silent. A magnificent grey moth that has somehow got into the kitchen flutters about between the two men for an instant. For the briefest of moments Aziz’s thoughts are taken up with the zigzagging of the moth, before returning to his father-in-law.
Right now he feels intense hatred for this man who has, in one way or another, brought misfortune upon their home.
“Ready for what, Mathieu?”
Mathieu can still feel the scalding tears lodged in the back of his eye-sockets. Shehera’s father wouldn’t understand. Maybe it would be better not to tell him anything? After all, tomorrow it will all be over for Mathieu, and whatever he might or might not have been fifty years ago will no longer matter. The old man is convinced that the game is up, that the end of the world – his little world, the only one that counts – is nigh.
So what is the point of all this? He has read somewhere that knowing the meaning of life does not at all help human beings to survive and that evolution, with faultless internal logic, has wasted no time making up for this flaw. Maybe it even sensibly gave up after a few trials revealed the self-destructive force of such knowledge? The old man feels like sniggering at his philosophical pretensions even as fear is swelling his prostate painfully once more, but he manages only to emit a sorry sigh.
“Aziz, listen to me. In a former life I tortured people. And one of them was Tahar.”
He nibbles at his lower lip, preparing himself for his humiliating confession.
“My friend Tahar.”
His son-in-law stares at him, as he expected, in amazement tinged with repugnance. Then, as if this surprising idea had only just crossed his mind, Mathieu sticks his hand in his jacket pocket and takes out an object wrapped carefully
in a handkerchief.
“It’s a pistol. A 9 millimetre, loaded. It’s ancient; the trigger’s stiff, the hammer’s even stiffer, but otherwise it works fine. I’ll show you how to use it, but listen to me first, please…”
And the old ape finally told the young ape the truth.
At first Tahar was scared, thinking that the walk would be nothing but the inevitable and classic ‘fire’ duty. Could it be anything else, when the soldier ordering him to dive into the bushes was the very same that had tortured him in every possible fashion? Mathieu had understood from his prisoner’s submissive attitude that the man was preparing to die, although that didn’t stop him feeling terrified.
“Get a move on or they’ll catch us! We’ve got to make it to the wadi and into the forest before they sound the alarm.”
Despite his chattering teeth, Tahar had reacted angrily.
“You think I’m falling for that one? Not satisfied with shooting me like a dog, you want the Arab to put on a funny act for you as well? Do your duty as a soldier and let’s get it over with.”
The headquarters was still in sight. Mathieu’s heart was beating so hard that black dots appeared in front of his eyes. He too was scared to death.
“You stupid idiot! I’m not going to kill you, I’m trying to save your life!”
The emaciated and bruised face tautened with contempt.
“Why would you do that for me? I didn’t talk when you shoved a bottle up my arse and crushed my balls in a vice. And now you’re hoping that I’m going to spill the beans because of lies so ridiculous even a child would spit in your face? I’m not moving. I’ll die here – this is as good a place as any.”
The man hurled an Arabic insult at him, then, indifferent to the thorns, sat down in the bushes.
“Shoot, arsehole! I’m tired and anyway you won’t be killing much of a man.”
Eyes closed and shoulders hunched, he waited for the shot to come. The soldier’s panic grew. If this Arab prick didn’t get up straight away, the soldiers would find them in no time. He was under no illusions as to what would happen to him. His boss’s rage at one of his best men’s treachery would be so great that he would dish him up everything in his arsenal: electricity, water-boarding, the bottle in the anus, and finally, if the DOP didn’t finish him off, there’d be a military tribunal, prison and doubtless execution for going over to the enemy.
He wasn’t an Arab! He wasn’t supposed to be tortured!
A taste of limitless despair welled up in his throat. For a few seconds he considered killing the Arab; he could always pretend there had been an attempt to intimidate him, a sham execution gone wrong. His officer would be furious, obviously, and would discipline a subordinate who had shown such disastrous independence of mind, but the matter would probably stop there.
What was he doing freeing this prisoner? This guy was the worst kind of murderer. He himself, as a well-regarded soldier, had never been on the receiving end; was he now going to risk his career because of a few spasms of a guilty conscience?
Get a grip on yourself, ordered a voice stationed on the threshold of his conscience, you’ve already made up your mind! A part of Mathieu objected that his conscience could go to hell. Another, just as horrified, claimed that it was too late to turn back and that, even if he put a bullet in the fell’s head, the Alsatian would suspect treachery; and having electrodes attached to your balls must hurt like hell…
The soldier wavered between these two thoughts. Then, as arbitrarily as though he’d decided on the toss of a coin, he put the barrel of the gun to the Arab’s temple.
I’m going to kill this man? Mathieu wondered in astonishment. The prisoner curled up on himself. He was breathing noisily, like a diver preparing to suck in as much oxygen as possible before going down.
What do we swim in when we’re dead? a stunned Mathieu asked himself.
“Hey, do you hear me? he said, tapping the prisoner softly on the temple with the gun barrel as if knocking on a door. “Hey matey, look at me!”
The intrigued Arab opened his eyelids. He was panting with the effort of controlling his fear. His haggard cheeks aged him, but he was probably not much older than himself, the soldier guessed. Deep down, I must be just as much of a bloody yellowbelly as this wog, he acknowledged, sickened at finding a resemblance with a creature he so disdained. And I mean to redeem myself by saving this bastard? What if all he does in return is cut my throat?
No, he couldn’t be making such a stupid mistake! He turned his gaze towards the forest, then back towards HQ. Dawn was already daubing the sky with an orange glow.
“Fuck it!” he muttered, once again changing his mind. Dry-mouthed, he stared into the Arab’s flickering pupils, which said both “Kill me, I entreat you!” and “Don’t kill me, for the love of…”
Resignedly he removed the magazine from its housing and held it out to the prisoner.
“Why?”
“So you trust me…”
“I don’t trust you or anyone else.”
“You don’t have any choice. Either that or they recapture you. You heard the officer, so you know what to expect.”
The man tried a mocking smile, but pain transformed it into a grimace.
“What about you? Do you have any choice?”
Mathieu got angry.
“Are you going to take the magazine or not?”
“Give me your pistol instead!” the prisoner suggested with the same incredulous scorn.
The Frenchman glanced towards headquarters, then handed over his gun.
“But I’m keeping the magazine. In the meantime…”
“You’ve got another gun? I bet you’re hiding another gun.”
“No,” Mathieu retorted, too quickly.
The man clambered awkwardly to his feet. He weighed the gun in his hand before muttering, his voice full of regret: “You don’t want to kill me anymore?”
“No. I almost did just now. I changed my mind.”
“Why? Did the Archangel Gabriel order you to love Arabs?”
“That’s none of your business, wanker. Now get moving or they’ll catch us.”
“Where are we going?” scoffed the Algerian. “I’m in a bad state. I won’t be able to run or even walk for long. My balls have swollen to the size of watermelons. I feel like screaming whenever I move, my cock is falling apart and the soles of my feet aren’t much better. You are aware… erm… of all the kindnesses you and your friends showered on me.”
“We get out of here, then we’ll see.”
“You want me to lead the Frenchman who tortured me to our men?”
“You mean the fells from your katiba?”
“I think you mean the FLN fighters,” the prisoner suggested, stressing every syllable, his face suddenly bare of all expression.
“No, I definitely don’t want you leading me to your… to them,” cried the deserter, unable to conceal his fear. “We get away from HQ, we reach the road under cover and then, when the time’s right, good day, goodbye, we separate and clear off in different directions.”
“You’re setting me free only to split up so soon?” the prisoner said sarcastically, his face still every bit as closed. “Arabs may be thick, but even a donkey might start wondering about you! You need me in order to quit the army, is that what you’d have me believe?”
He spoke calmly, rolling his ‘r’s a lot and rubbing his wrists where the rope he’d been hung up by had left deep, ugly weals.
“Look at these wounds – you almost took my arms off! Your offer makes no sense. Why would you run the slightest risk for me when you’ve tortured me for days on end? Where’s the catch? Are you trying to obtain through cunning what you couldn’t through beating?”
The man eyed him with quiet hatred. The sergeant’s voice was supposed to sound scathing, but started to quaver as the insult hit home.
“You’re like the plague victim’s turd laughing at the pool of piss under the guy who caught cholera! After what you did in Mecht
a Kasbah, a shit like you isn’t really in any position to lecture people, wouldn’t you say?”
The fell shook his head sombrely, but it wasn’t clear whether he was agreeing or not. Then he uttered an unexpected sound – a kind of furious “Heuh!” – before spitting on the ground. For a couple of seconds, Mathieu was about to hit this native who was making fun of him with impunity; he had beaten him so often that it felt almost unfair not to be able to thrash him anymore.
“Watch it, mate. You think too much for someone who deserves to be flushed down the toilets of a brothel.”
Still holding the empty pistol in his right hand, the prisoner unwittingly puckered up his lips as if tasting the spice of the strange fate his former torturer had presented him with.
Mathieu lost his temper. “There is no catch – I swear on my mother’s life! I’ve brought along some civilian clothes. If you want to be free, you should put them on…”
He had sworn on his mother’s life for the first time ever! I’m going nuts! he thought. Trembling with anger and incomprehension at himself, Mathieu opened his haversack to get out the clothes. He just had time to notice his ex-prisoner’s raised arm. Something exploded in his skull and he fell, first to his knees and then face down on the ground.
A cracking of branches roused him abruptly from unconsciousness. He spat out the dirt and small stones soiling his mouth.
“Ow!” he went, putting one hand to his temple, but stifled a second cry of pain. How long had he been unconscious? The soldiers sent out from HQ to look for them must be hiding in the bushes; they would have heard him shout out!
How am I going to explain myself? God, they’re going to tear me to pieces! he screamed silently, curling up in terror. His head was aching horribly. Mathieu cursed with all his soul the strange outbreak of scruples that had driven him to release an inmate he had tortured for so long. Now it was his turn to shit his pants!
“Hey?”
The voice behind the bush called out to him in a chillingly ironic tone: “Get up, idiot! And just so you know, I’ve put your magazine in your pistol! Come on, hurry up, your friends will be here any moment…”