27 MARCH, 1957: FIRST DAY
Genesis iv, 10
From the top of the vast organization chart that fills a whole section of the office wall Tarik Hadj Nacer, known as Tahar the Pure, seems to view the world with inordinate melancholy. At the time when this photograph was taken at a police station in Constantine, he had not yet acquired his nickname. He was simply an employee in a bank with subversive ideas and even if he was beginning to grasp that he could no longer escape his future as a warlord in a clandestine war, he may well have been resigning himself to it without enthusiasm. Two months earlier, when Capitaine André Degorce moved in, Tahar had presided there all alone, like the sovereign of an invisible kingdom, at the top of a blank organization chart, which is now almost entirely covered by dozens of names and photographs, most of them marked with a little red cross. When not one of the boxes remains empty Capitaine André Degorce will have finished his task. He knows it is only a matter of time now and he also knows that when that day arrives he will be incapable of rejoicing at his victory. All his life he has cherished dreams of victory, without ever knowing anything other than a long series of defeats, but it would never have occurred to him that on the eve of his wish finally being granted he would have to discover how cruel victory can be and that it would cost him a great deal more than all he had to give. He can no longer pray. In vain he kneels in the dim light of his bedroom, straining after fervour, as he has done since childhood, no word rises to his lips. He remains motionless in the silence, letting himself be lulled by the regular beating of his numbed heart until he finally decides to open his Bible at random and softly read out several verses that bring him no comfort. He no longer finds messages of hope in the scriptures, only the endlessly repeated expression of a terrifying threat. He can no longer receive letters from Jeanne-Marie without trembling. Every day he delays opening them for fear of learning that he has already received his punishment. He imagines that his nephew has suddenly been taken ill or his daughter has died, carried off in a few days by pneumonia, or knocked over by a car, on account of what he is doing here.
(I know who you are. I have listened to your voice for a long time. You are a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.)
Yet again this morning he does no more than stroke the envelope with his fingertips and smell the perfume before summoning an N.C.O.
“Febvay, tell the Kabylian I’m coming to see him. Put the others with him into another cell. Take him some cigarettes. And tea. Be friendly. Tell him there will be no more questioning. I just want to come and have a talk. Call me when everything’s ready.”
Capitaine Degorce lights a cigarette and smokes it carefully, leaning his brow against a window pane. The sun is shining on the bay and there are no clouds over the sea, but the sky is not really blue, it is streaked with faded, yellowish trails, that give it the dull, dirty colour of the water in a pond. In this country the sky is never blue, not even in summer, especially not in summer, when the burning desert wind blurs the outlines of the city with eddies of ochre dust and a haze of glittering mist floats up from the dead waves of the Mediterranean where the red hulls of the freighters bob up and down. He remembers a holiday spent with Jeanne-Marie and the children back in Corsica in April two years before, breakfast on the terrace of a hotel in Piana, looking across to the Golfo di Porto, the incredibly clearly defined silhouette of the rocky pinnacles against the deep blue of a limpid sky and finds it hard to believe that the coastline he is looking at today is washed by the same sea, one that spreads out beneath the same sky.
He banishes the image of his daughter smiling in the autumn sunlight. He wishes that what he is about to do was already done.
“Everything’s ready, mon capitaine.”
*
The Kabylian is leaning against the wall. He is naked, wrapped in a dirty blanket. He rests his big green eyes upon the capitaine who sits down cross-legged, facing him.
“You look as if you’re getting over it,” says the capitaine, putting a hand on his shoulder.
The Kabylian represses a moan of pain and tries to shake himself free. The capitaine withdraws his hand.
“You’ve been very brave, you know. My men were all very impressed. They respect you a great deal. Anyway, it’s finished now. The sergent must have told you. We’re not monsters. Everyone knows you won’t speak. We won’t go on. There would be no point. I’m full of admiration.”
The capitaine lights a cigarette and offers one to the Kabylian.
“Full of admiration,” he insists. “I’ve been through it all, you know, in 1944. I know what I’m talking about.”
The Kabylian shrugs. The capitaine gives an amused little laugh.
“I see you accept my cigarettes but not my admiration. Isn’t that so, Abdelkrim?”
Where I Left My Soul Page 2