“Listen,” Capitaine Degorce, goes on. “We have to be able to show respect to worthy enemies. This is something that does honour to us. Do you understand? It’s important.”
“Fine, mon capitaine.”
“Tarik Hadj Nacer is a worthy enemy, Moreau. Truly worthy.”
“Very good, mon capitaine, I’ll see to it,” says Moreau, doing an about-turn.
The capitaine remains sitting on the edge of his desk for a moment, then goes out into the corridor.
“Moreau! Come back here for a moment. I haven’t finished.”
“Yes, mon capitaine?”
“Look here, Moreau, there’s something you ought to know. This is my own initiative. It’s quite personal on my part. I’ve not told anyone about it. I don’t have anyone’s authorization and I’m not sure I would have been able to get it. So there you are, I’m not ordering you to do this, Moreau. If you have a problem with it I’ll ask someone else to see to it. You must feel totally free. I should welcome your support, but I shall not hold it against you if you want to opt out. You have my word. I’ll find someone else. There you are. You decide.”
“What you’re doing has my full support, mon capitaine,” Moreau replies at once. “That’s what I think. I’ll see to it. I’ll be glad to see to it. Thank you for taking me into your confidence, mon capitaine.”
(My family.)
“It is I who thank you, adjudant-chef,” murmurs Capitaine Degorce, shaking his hand. “Thank you.”
He feels completely at ease, cleansed and relieved. He has succeeded in arranging for matters to turn out honourably. He perceives the future in glowing colours. Just a few more weeks and it will all be over. He will have done his duty and will know that it was not in vain. Pointless questions will no longer arise. Tahar will have the fair trial he deserves and one day soon, a day which will finally dawn, everything will be behind them and they will no longer be enemies. He opens the door of the cell in good spirits. Tahar looks up at him.
“It’s all arranged,” Capitaine Degorce announces as he sits down. “They’ll come to collect you tonight and tomorrow you’ll be handed over to stand trial in France.”
“Good,” says Tahar. “Tomorrow. And tonight, where will I spend tonight?”
“Away from here,” Capitaine Degorce replies. “In the charge of the officer I am to hand you over to, I suppose. At Saint-Eugène.”
Tahar closes his eyes.
“Tomorrow’s Friday,” he whispers. “I’m fortunate.”
“What do you mean?” asks Capitaine Degorce and the anxiety he thought was gone burns his chest again.
Tahar smiles sadly.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Capitaine Degorce is sitting less than six feet away from him, but he feels as if an infinite distance lay between them and it has always been thus. The hearts of men are such a mystery. This one’s heart is an even greater one. The capitaine would like to be able to wrest Tahar out of his solitude and draw him towards him, if only for moment, and he looks at him with an almost imploring goodwill.
(One day this war will be over and you and I will once again sit face to face in full sunlight, and we shall be able to talk, then, we shall be able to tell one another all that we have not had time to say here.)
“One day this war will be over, you’ll see,” says Capitaine Degorce.
“I know, capitaine,” says Tahar.
He has not re-opened his eyes. His features have slowly subsided and he looks very old. Shadows obscure his face where deep lines, that can be guessed at already, will form, lying in wait at the corners of his eyes, on his brow, in the hollows of his cheeks. And little by little the shadows fade away, the bitter line of the mouth slowly becomes a smile, cracks appear in the mask of old age and it silently breaks up. The eyes open, but the light shining in them remains indecipherable. All the things Capitaine Degorce would like to say seem to him empty and inappropriate.
“I shall come to fetch you,” he simply says before leaving the cell.
He goes out into the street to smoke a cigarette. The wind has dropped and a vast sun is setting slowly over the city. Grains of sand cling to the windows and the wire mesh. The air is laden with dust and humidity. Capitaine Degorce wonders how anyone can become attached to this city. If it possesses a secret charm, he finds it impossible to detect. He will leave it with no regrets. In the interrogation room Febvay sits on a table, eating a large apple, cutting it in pieces with a commando knife, from time to time directing furious glances at Robert Clément, who is handcuffed to a radiator. He spits the pips in his direction.
“Still nothing,” notes Capitaine Degorce.
“Nothing at all, mon capitaine.”
The capitaine kneels beside Clément.
“The nights here are not very pleasant, you know,” he confides. “And the worst of it is that you never get used to them. I’ve noticed that. Each night is worse than the last. They’re wrong to say you can get used to everything. Folk wisdom doesn’t amount to much, does it?”
Clément maintains a stubborn silence.
“Well, you’ll see for yourself. But it’s foolish. And utterly pointless, believe me. Don’t bring it upon yourself. Now I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, someone in your family, your mother perhaps, or your fiancée, is going to come here and ask for news of you. And do you know what I’m going to reply? No? I’m going to tell them we released you this afternoon and I’m very surprised she still has no news of you. I shall offer her all my sympathy and ask her not to fail to keep me informed. I shall appear anxious, very anxious. I know my anxiety is particularly contagious. And when she’s gone I’ll come and describe every detail of the scene to you. I shall leave nothing out, you can be sure of that. You may possibly listen to me with more of your splendid indifference, through pride or stupidity. And then there will be another night and you’ll think about all this again. You won’t be able to help thinking about it. You’ll realize that you no longer exist. You’ll think about the distress of your loved ones. They’re terrible, night thoughts. I’ve noticed that as well. I’m very observant. You’ll end up seeing things differently. You’ll tell me what I want to know, I’m sure of it.”
The capitaine studies Clément and leans closer to his ear.
“And if I’m wrong, and being mistaken really annoys me, which for your sake I hope won’t be the case, here’s what I may do. I’ll release you. I’ll take you to your work place and take my leave of you very warmly, I promise you. I’ll even embrace you and before that my men will have put the word round everywhere, in all the right circles, showering you with praise. They’ll talk about your enthusiasm for assisting the army of your beloved country, and the courage with which you have agreed to go under cover, you see. And your release will be followed by a wave of very public arrests. I’ll make sure of that. I don’t think you’ll have time to pack your bags.”
Capitaine Degorce gives Clément a couple of friendly pats on the shoulder.
“Do you know what your friends in the F.L.N. do to traitors? I’ve got some photographs if it interests you.”
Clément turns towards the capitaine and spits in his face. Febvay leaps to his feet.
“Leave him, Febvay.” Capitaine Degorce restrains him, wiping his face. “Leave him. This means that Monsieur Clément has already begun to think. Lock him up for the night. In solitary.”
(Filthy little shit.)
*
The sheets of paper are no longer blank. On each one of them he has written the date and “Dear Mother and Father,” “My dearest wife, my beloved children”, and even, “My dear Marcel”. And that is all. It is eleven o’clock and night has fallen. He has forced himself to eat something and sits there, pen in hand, turning his head every time there is the sound of an engine. He picks up the start of the letter intended for Marcel and tosses it into the waste paper basket with the feeling of having effectively solved a part of his problem. “Dear Mother and Fa
ther, look after your health, especially you, papa. Everything here is going as well as possible. Your son, André.” No point in rereading it. The thing to do is to put it into an envelope as quickly as possible and stop thinking about it. Words will come back. “My dearest wife, my beloved children, an extremely busy day prevents me from writing to you at length and only leaves me time to tell you that all’s going well and to send you my fondest love.” Outgoing mail. His mind is intact. He is capable of developing complex arguments and taking decisions. He can formulate and understand the givens of a problem, assess the relative importance of intelligence. He knows how to devise plans which call for the elaboration of middle-term and long-term conjectures. But naturally, when it comes to writing a letter to his nearest and dearest, something else is needed, something he has plainly lost. His soul, perhaps, the soul which brings words to life. He has left his soul behind somewhere along the way and he does not know where. Tomorrow he will have to resume this ordeal – writing, writing at least something, and he regrets not having kept copies of his letters, so that he could send them again, unchanged. But, in fact, that is virtually what he has been doing for weeks now. A copy would be quite pointless. He looks at the organization chart. When he has completed it he will be able to retrace his steps and retrieve his soul, wherever he has left it. For the time being what lies within him is a desert.
(And my thoughts are like graffiti on the walls of an empty room.)
Everything is silent. It is a fearful hour of the night. The daylight is fled and will not reappear for a long time. It is the hour when Christ’s heart was filled with anguish in the darkness of the garden of Gethsemane, the apostles had abandoned him into sleep, leaving him to his appalling solitude, and his heart is the frail heart of a man, terrified at the approach of death. He falls face downwards upon the ground, the leaves of the olive trees shiver in the wind and there is nothing to keep the bitter chalice at bay. It is the hour when the soldiers of the Sanhedrin are arming and the melancholy Procurator of Judaea paces the corridors of his silent palace, endlessly putting off the hour when he goes to bed. For him, too, this night is a night of anguish and he does not know why. He broods on the terrors of childhood and is devastated that they have returned to trouble the austere and serious man he has become. He has a taste of blood in his mouth and his soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. Capitaine Degorce switches off the light in his office and paces, in his turn, along interminable corridors, he walks slowly, without meeting anyone, and feels as if he were a prisoner in an endless labyrinth. In the end he finds Moreau.
“I’m going to lie down for a while. Wake me when Andreani arrives.”
In his room he picks up his Bible and sniffs the pages. The delicious scent of paper and glue calms him. He reads: “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungred and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick and in prison and ye visited me not.” Capitaine Degorce lies down, fully clothed, on his bed with his eyes open. It is this text that is an endless labyrinth. He gets up again. The corridors, once more, and the door of the cell and finally Tahar, who asks him, straightening up: “Is it time?”
“No,” replies Capitaine Degorce. “I have come to wait for it with you, if that does not disturb you. Let me stay with you, please,” he says again – and Tahar smiles at him.
I remember you, mon capitaine, and I can still see you in court walking towards the bench without even a glance at the dock where Paul Mattei and I were watching as you passed by. You were wearing all your decorations and the brand-new insignia of a lieutenant-colonel. They may have ended up making you a général, but don’t hold it against me, mon capitaine, if I stick with the rank you held as a young man, the only one you owed to your courage and not to your utter servility, a servility so great that even today I may well not have grasped the full extent of it. For I am stubborn, and the love I bore you has left such a deep trace in my heart that I have never been able to abandon the absurd hope of meeting you again, a hope that has been endlessly disappointed, of course, as it was in April 1961, when, right up to the last moment, I believed you would come over to us in support of the generals and l’Algérie française. You were only a commandant then, I had not seen you since the fighting at Wilaya 5, and even though I was already aware of that victory meaning nothing to you and of your being ready to allow yourself to be robbed of it to the benefit of Tahar’s friends, who had so little deserved it, I nevertheless believed you would not accept having shed all that blood for nothing, blood that victory alone could make sense of. Yes, mon capitaine, I am stubborn and I refused to see that deep down you were nothing more than a lackey, a faithful servant, grateful to his masters for the baubles with which they reward his base conduct, but you stayed put, you accepted the ignominy imposed on us, without turning a hair, like the other lackeys, our former brothers in arms, of whom we learned that, one after the other, they were defecting, despite all their solemn promises, and Paul Mattei said to me, Horace, it can’t end like this. No, mon capitaine, nothing could end like that, in a grotesque, final charade, neither that war, nor our revolt, for we refused to forget our promises, and we kept them, whatever the cost, by renouncing everything that had driven our lives up until then, that cowardly army, the nation of lackeys that had betrayed its own memory and shamefully turned a blind eye as Belkacem and his kin were being taken to the slaughterhouse, as if the blood of these men counted for nothing, and I could not prevent it, but I could keep my promises and show that blood had a price, an exorbitant price, one that had to be paid. At the opening of our trial Paul stood up and asked, of what am I to be absolved? after which he remained silent, but as for me, mon capitaine, I did not honour them with a single word, I left them to the virtue of their selective indignation, refusing to participate in any way in the proceedings of that masquerade, I did not even object when our counsel sought to subpoena you as a witness. Oh, maybe it was not solely on principle, after all, mon capitaine, that I made no objection, maybe I was still expecting something from you, for I am stubborn, or maybe a secret part of me, hidden in the depths of my heart, was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing you again, no-one can say, and I listened to you giving your evidence to the court, I heard you speaking in conventional terms about our exemplary conduct in Indochina, about the difficulties of service in Algeria and the exceptionally tragic circumstances that might perhaps mitigate the heinousness of our treason, and I was stunned for, except at the moment when you murmured some inept phrase or other about the difficulty of protecting one’s soul during that cruel war, you appeared to be reciting a prepared text, you stared rigidly in front of you, I clearly remember, and it was so evident that you were only there out of a sense of duty, our actions inspired so manifest a revulsion in you, that it may well have been your evidence that was the deciding factor in our being condemned to death. No, mon capitaine, I should not be surprised to learn it, but I do not hold it against you, death has been no stranger to me for a long time, as you well know, and it was the prospect of going on living in this fragile, ancient world, that seemed unfamiliar, almost daunting to me then, perhaps I was never able to do justice to life, something my little seminarist already used to deplore in the letters he wrote to me from the slopes of the Djurdjura mountains before an unknown F.L.N. zone chieftain decided to have him executed. Once calm was restored in the city, when our work at the villa in Saint-Eugène was finished, I did everything I could to avoid him being given a combat posting, even though he had made known his wish to remain with me, but he had done enough, it had not been his choice and he deserved peace. It is, of course, still painful to me that, in seeking to grant him peace, I set him on a course towards those who would murder him, but there were so many murderers about that they doubtless awaited him at the end of any one of the paths that might have taken him far away from the v
illage in Kabylia where he was posted as a teacher. After three months I received his first letter, I clearly remember, this was probably the time it had taken him to emerge from the devastation the villa in Saint-Eugène had buried him in and he felt reborn, he wrote that he thought of me often, and that he would have liked me to be able to come and spend a few days with him, so as to understand what life could be, despite the poverty, despite the war, indeed the war seemed to be so far away, he went on to write, that he quite often left his M.A.T.49 rifle behind in the corner of the classroom where he had set it down that morning, and the children would come running after him to hand him back his gun as he was already walking back to his base, with his hands in his pockets, smiling at the sunset, as if he had finally become a carefree child like the others, and that is how I still picture him today. He thanked me for having given him this chance and commiserated with me, he said he was certain that it would one day be granted to me, too, to be reborn and that he would never go back to metropolitan France, even when the war was over, he would remain there with his children, he would be teaching them to write their names in fine rounded script, teach them to sing counting rhymes, to do the conga amid gleeful shouts along the lanes of the village and to twist together the endless supply of plastic scoubidou threads that his mother used to send him by post, and which the little girls would attach to their multicoloured necklaces amid laughter, he wrote me their names, but these have slipped my memory, Djeyda, Ghozlene, Dihya, and he repeated that he would never abandon them, he would continue to watch them marvelling at being photographed, as they sat on the school courtyard wall, the vivid colours of their best dresses glowing in the summer light, and he would never walk away from the smiles that both broke his heart and filled him with a love of life so indomitable that not even the memories of suffering and death that some-times kept him awake at night could tarnish its radiance. He had, of course, lost his faith in God, but the new faith that inspired him seemed enduring and he had no regrets. His pupils’ parents sometimes invited him to eat a modest vegetable couscous with them, or, on feast days, a roast boar, the unclean portion of which had been scrupulously removed, cursed and thrown into the fire, he would get back to the base later and later, with an ever more carefree tread and it was on his return from one of these meals, one night in 1959, that he got himself killed. The sous-lieutenant in command of the base only noticed his absence the following day and they found his mutilated body beside the road. His M.A.T.49 had vanished. If I had been in command of that base, mon capitaine, I should have arrested the whole of the family who had invited him to dinner, knowing he would be returning alone in the darkness, I should have had their hovel burned, but I did not even suggest this to that idiot of a sous-lieutenant and, in memory of my little seminarist, I settled for believing that all the smiles that had lit up his last weeks had been pure and sincere and I simply asked to be allowed to write the letter myself that had to be sent to his parents. This was contrary to normal practice, but the sous-lieutenant agreed at once – in fact I was relieving him of an unwelcome chore, all he would have been capable of doing would be stringing out the same set phrases which you yourself used at my trial, mon capitaine, exemplary conduct, tragic circumstances, all that nonsense, and his indifference would have sullied my memory of that boy, which mattered so much to me, yes, it mattered to me, and it was from you, mon capitaine, that I learned the need to employ the convoluted paths of untruth so as to preserve the memory of the dead and the essential truth of them, something infinitely more precious than the bald truth of facts. I gathered up his personal effects, letters, a little vocabulary in which he had begun noting words in Kabylian and their meanings, the black Christ wrapped in old newspaper and dozens of photographs he had taken in the village. I addressed the letter to his mother, I told her about the great affection I had for her son, who had served under me for a number of months, during the course of which I had come to appreciate his character and his unswerving moral rectitude, I spoke of the extremely important secretarial work he had carried out for me, but it was only in Kabylia, I wrote, that the mission entrusted to him had been in accord with his deepest aspirations and I assured her that he was happy, so happy that, even while he was aware of the threat that hung over him, he had not wanted to leave, and that perhaps she might find in this some comfort for her grief, I wrote that his death had been quick, that he had not suffered, I gave her my word for this, mon capitaine, I knew his body would be returned to her in a sealed coffin and she would never know what they had made him suffer that night and I wrote that all the children who had become his own were inconsolable, they would never forget him, they would join her in mourning her son, in that village she did not know on the slopes of the Djurdjura mountain range and this, at least, might be true. I finished by offering to visit her, if she wished, on my return to metropolitan France, but, of course, I never had the opportunity to do this, and I packed up all my little seminarist’s belongings, apart from the photograph of the little girls in the school courtyard, Massiva, Leïla and Thiziri, which I kept, as I had the right to do, since it was for me he had taken it, for me alone, and still today, when I look at it, I remember him, I remember him clearly, but I think of you too, my brother, mon capitaine, every time I meet those solemn eyes and smiles which it is forbidden to you, and to me, to fathom. I sent off the parcel and the letter and went back to Wilaya 5, where Colonel Lotfi’s katiba units were raiding our command posts before taking refuge beyond the frontier with Morocco. You ought to have been relieved at once more encountering war as you had always known it, mon capitaine, out in the open, against armed enemies who had finally hauled you out from the damp cellars of El-Biar, but one only needed to look at you for a moment to sense that you were not. Perhaps you had grasped that nothing could halt what had once been begun, and that even here, on the threshold of the Sahara, the only thing that mattered was obtaining intelligence. When one of our patrols was massacred near a village to the south of Béchar, I went into the village with my men where there were children crouched down chewing cat-mint with closed eyes, from time to time wiping away with their cuffs the green saliva that ran down their chins, a large dog with pointed ears, covered in flies, hung from the branch of a stunted tree, I clearly remember. I had all the villagers assembled and, in front of them all I fired a bullet into the head of the village headman, he fell on his side, his scarf unwound on the sand, a woman let out a cry, but the children did not stir, and I asked Belkacem to translate what I told the villagers. I told them they must give up hope of living, I told them they were all going to die and they had no choice between life and death, the only choice they had was at whose hand death came, at mine or that of the rebellion, and I told them I would return every time they gave intelligence to the F.L.N. and not me, I would return every time they gave food to one of the rebels, every time they gave him a drink of water from their well, even a single drop, I would return, they would learn to know me and when they knew me, the only thing they would wish would be for death not to come to them from me. Did I tell you how I obtained the intelligence that enabled us to set that ambush between Taghit and Béhar in 1960? Did I tell you, mon capitaine? I do not think so, but I had no need to tell you, is that not so, for you knew very well, even if you preferred not to be told. It was night. The crescent moon was shining in a starry sky and just beside the long desert road a little dromedary was being suckled by its mother, on trembling, spindly legs. You had the machine guns set up just at the top of a slope and when the men of the katiba appeared you gave the command to open fire. The group under my command caught them from the rear as they tried to escape and we took about ten prisoners. I asked them who their officer was, they pointed to a corpse and I made them kneel beside the road. They did not beg, they did not ask questions. No doubt they knew this was the best thing that could happen to them. They fell forward, face downwards in the sand. I heard the little dromedary uttering piteous cries. Its mother had been hit by a burst of gunfire and it was strainin
g towards the great motionless body, trying to reach the teats so as to go on sucking, but it could not manage to do so and it raised its long neck towards the moon, squealing. I had it shot as well. I did not want to leave it to starve to death. When I caught up with you, you asked me how many prisoners we had and I replied that we had no prisoners. I added that we needed the officer’s body and you dismissed me with a gesture, looking the other way, as if the only thing that mattered to you was to leave me in no doubt of your contempt. But the truth is that it was I who held you in contempt, mon capitaine, that night more than ever. The next day I went back to the village with the body of the A.L.N. officer, I threw it down at the centre of the village in front of the assembled villagers and told them that the person who had threatened them was dead, and all his men with him, but that I was alive and that only living people were to be feared. They went up to the body, they looked at his face and I swear to you, mon capitaine, that for a brief moment, despite their terror and despair, I sensed their gratitude. I needed their terror and despair, I needed it so that we could achieve the victory of which we were robbed, with your shameful connivance, and for which all those people would have been eternally grateful. I have not forgotten them, you know, and when, years later, outside the Hôtel Saint-George, the taxi driver asked me where my family home was, I named that village to the south of Béchar and he told me he had not realized it was so far away and he could not take me there, not on account of the distance, he had driven longer distances before then, he could have taken me down to the south for several days and would have quoted a price, but on account of the danger. There were a lot of dummy road blocks and he told me that it was just close to that village of mine that a whole wedding party on its way to Taghit had had their throats cut, even the musicians, did I know? and I told him, yes I did know, I knew the road very well where it had happened. It may well have been at the very spot where our machine guns had decimated the katiba that they set up their dummy road block, waiting there in their stolen uniforms, and the bride, who was called Zohra, Hayet or Sabah, I simply cannot remember, would have been thinking that this interminable police inspection was going to delay the celebration and the moment of intimacy, and the people went on singing, mon capitaine, they were singing, I love you, Sara, let me live in your heart, and the bride noticed that the policemen were not wearing regulation shoes, the cars slowed down, all eyes were focused on the non-matching shoes and someone screamed while a single voice finished singing, I’d die for you, Sara, and they all knew they were never going to reach Taghit and would never be able to sit down in the shade of the tent erected for them beside the palm grove, at the foot of the earth walls, the bride pressed close to her husband who put his hand on her sterile belly, her old maid’s belly, that would never be put to use, and they were made to get out of the cars decorated with white ribbons, the weather was so dry that their blood dried almost instantly and the desert wind set a darbouka drum rolling in the dust, it caused the satin robes to billow, sent torn lace flying and carried fine pink grains of sand towards the sea. The taxi driver sadly remarked that there was no end to the way life kept on turning ugly and then began to smile as he pointed out that the sky had darkened, here we have all four seasons on the same day, you see? and I said I know, in one way this is my country too, but he grew sad again and murmured, no, monsieur, this is no longer a country, a country of men, it’s a slaughterhouse and a prison and what we are is sacrificial lambs, he told me how his daughter of twelve had started wetting her bed every night, she woke herself up crying and was soaked in piss, as if she were not twelve but three, or even two, and the glittering eyes of wolves had come back to lie in wait for her in the darkness, the night was once more filled with wolves and monsters, she could feel their hot breath in the darkness of her nightmares, and she woke up crying out, with the bitter stench of piss in her nostrils, she frightened her little brothers who started crying out as well, and there was nothing to be done, in vain did they cajole her or scold her, tell her she was no longer a child, every night she began again, even smacking her would have been useless and he could not strike his daughter because he loved her and understood her terror, so he would hold her in his arms, all thin and stinking, until she went to sleep again. And he said, you’re lucky to have gone away, monsieur, but, as you can see, it’s started to rain and in an hour’s time there will be sun. I made no reply and thought about my little seminarist, I wondered whether his new faith in the power of life would have survived, and for how long, or whether he would finally have realized that children’s smiles mean nothing and that it is we, mon capitaine, who are right not to understand this, and I remembered that the paths of untruth sometimes lead to the truth, as you taught me, for I was certain now that, as I had written to his mother, even if he had foreseen his death, he would not have wanted to leave. This is how truth is born from lies, the little seminarist accepted his death and Capitaine Lestrade was a hero, why should they be pitied? But you, mon capitaine, you have had to continue to live, like a lackey, clinging to principles you no longer had the strength to believe in, I realized this that night on the road to Taghit, I remember it clearly, you were staring at the moon as if you were alone in the world and no longer even had the strength to rejoice at your own victories, even your contempt was a sign of weakness. I really must have loved you, not to have understood at that moment that nothing had any importance in your eyes any longer, not even your own petty self, to which you were nevertheless so attached, and if I had understood what you had become, I should never have hoped for your support in 1961 and your pathetic evidence at our trial would not have surprised and hurt me to such an extent, as you have hurt me so many times before, without even being aware of it. It is very hard to resign oneself to living, as I well know, I have known it for such a long time, mon capitaine, and I forbade my counsel to go to the Court of Appeal, I did not want to wait any longer, I did not want to hear any more speeches, I did not want to have to bear my parents’ devastated faces in the visitors’ room at Fresnes prison any longer, nor Paul Mattei’s sister’s tears, and I hoped all that would not last, but Salan saved his own skin and I realized they were not going to execute us. The night that followed the announcement of our reprieve Paul tried to kill himself, but they rescued him, they did not even allow him to choose his own death, and when I saw him after he came out of hospital, he said to me, what a farce, Horace, what a farce and what humiliation, I replied, yes, and embraced him. In 1968 we were released and returned home. I had never been back to my village since my return from Indochina, but I still had my house there and a plot in the cemetery. I spent years without speaking a word to the militant communists I had played with during my childhood and they eyed me as if I were the devil. But everything is so weightless, mon capitaine, everything is forgotten so rapidly, hatred turns cold and that coldness fades and we used to get together to play cards in the village bar, in a corner by the fire in winter and under the vine in summer, until we all grew old. I stopped telephoning Paul because we no longer had anything to say to one another, but I never gave up hope of meeting you again, one day, perhaps by chance, I no longer remembered the name of your wife’s village and in any case I should not have made the trip there, but I was endlessly expecting to run into you, perhaps shopping in the town, on a street corner, and I knew I should recognize you, for I had already glimpsed the face of the old man you have become, I saw it appear for a moment on that morning in spring 1957, and I remember it clearly. I do not know why I was so eager to see you again, perhaps to settle an old debt which I had allowed to lapse for all these years – for I owe you something, mon capitaine, and have done for a long time, something I no longer want to keep to myself. We had prepared everything, you know, while you were dreaming your daydreams. We had fixed a hook to the ceiling down in the cellar and fastened a rope to it. Whatever you may think, mon capitaine, I do not particularly like causing suffering, I settle for doing what has to be done and doing it well. As we were driving towards S
aint-Eugène, Tahar said nothing. Seated between the seminarist and Belkacem, who was whistling his song, he stared at his manacled hands. When we reached the villa he saw the rope and the chair and did not look surprised. If I could have killed him without his being aware of anything I would have done so, but that was not possible, and I, too, would like to do him justice on this point, mon capitaine, it is true that he was brave, even though this is utterly unimportant. For a moment I was afraid the absurd notion would occur to him of making a speech to us or uttering a historic pronouncement, but he did not do it, he understood the situation and knew it was not the moment to indulge in any kind of ridiculous childishness. But there is one thing he did say, however, yes, he did say something and I owe you the truth. He turned to me and asked, will you pass on a message from me to Capitaine Degorce? and I looked at him and replied no. He was immediately lifted onto the chair to put the rope around his neck, I kicked away the chair and Belkacem put his arms round his waist and hung onto him. The little seminarist remained standing close to the door and turned his head away. Everything was over very quickly. Perhaps I should have heard his message, perhaps I should at least have told you the following morning that he had wanted to say something to you, of which neither you nor I will ever have an inkling, but I could not bring myself to do it, mon capitaine, you treated me like a dog and I had no desire to relieve your suffering, unless, perhaps, it was that I did not want to make you suffer anymore. I could have continued to leave all this buried for ever in the depths of a cellar in Saint-Eugène, but I am stubbornly loyal and the truth is that nothing is buried, I remember everything, I remember it clearly, and have carried everything around with me, the living as well as the dead, which was why I had to go back there, the pitiless land of my childhood having become daily more foreign to me, and I was not lying to the taxi driver when I told him his country was also mine, precisely because it is no longer a country and no country exists for men like me, or like you, mon capitaine. The day before I left I invited the taxi driver to dine with me in the restaurant at the HÔtel Saint-George where, of course, he had never set foot. We drank a digestif under the jasmine and he cast uneasy glances at the waiters, as if he were expecting to be thrown out at any moment. The following day, before taking me to the airport which bears the name of one of our enemies, he took me to take tea with him at his home in a public housing unit in Bab-el-Oued. His living room was crowded with plastic cans filled with water, on which his daughter set down the tea and plates piled high with little pastries that came from a patisserie where he must have paid a fortune for them. The taxi driver’s wife was nursing a crying baby. His daughter sat opposite me and looked at me, smiling, with the same serious and solemn look I had so often encountered in that photograph, taken long ago, one summer morning in Kabylia. I did not ask her her name. When I left she stood up to kiss me. She smelled of eau de cologne. And we drove to the airport, mon capitaine. I knew I would never go back. I shook the taxi driver’s hand and I left behind the El-Harrach rubbish tip, the coastal road to Saint-Eugène, the collapsed houses of the Casbah, the wolves’ eyes glittering in the darkness and all those children smiling without knowing why, and very far to the south, on the long desert road of our cruel youth, the shade of a nameless bride awaiting her wedding night between Taghit and Béchar.
Where I Left My Soul Page 8