The Guillotine Choice

by Michael J Malone

  ‘You came,’ Arab said in a dry whisper. ‘I hoped you would. Before I died.’ This was Arab. This was the man whose actions led to him living all of his adult life in this waking hell.

  ‘Cousin, hush.’ Mohand paused, words caught in a lump in his throat. A man he had known his whole life was about to die. His last link to home was about to be severed. ‘Save your energy.’

  Arab’s eyes met his. They spoke of regret, pain and guilt. Guilt so heavy it was squeezing the last drop of air from his lungs. His lips parted slowly as if held together by weak gum. A word escaped. Released on an exhalation.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Hush,’ Mohand said again and reached for Arab’s hand. His skin was cool. Dry. Mohand leaned forward until his forehead was resting on the back of Arab’s hand. He allowed the release of his grief and wept.

  He felt a hand rest lightly on the back of his head. The benediction of a dying man.

  ‘Don’t… deserve…’ Mohand heard him say and then the hand slid off to the side as if the energy needed to keep it there was too much.

  Mohand leaned back and noted that Arab’s eyes were closed. Was this the moment? He could see that his chest was rising and falling in a slow rhythm. Death may have been imminent but it wasn’t going to happen right away. He had more time to spend with his cousin.

  He recalled the time he spent with Ali near his end and, although he was sure that Arab was sleeping, he talked of the things they had spoken about then. Words of the past vibrated in his throat and hummed in his ear. He didn’t get many opportunities to speak Berber and he relished this connection to family and his past. He spoke of mountains and rivers and olive groves and dry heat. Speaking until fatigue worked his voice to a whisper and then released him into sleep.

  * * *

  A voice startled him. Deep and strong.

  ‘It’s time.’

  Mohand sat up and looked at the orderly who had spoken. The message delivered with a practical note. What was left unsaid was, ‘We need to clear the bed for the next patient.’

  With an almost scientific detachment, Mohand studied the face of the corpse. He had done all his crying the previous night while his cousin still breathed. This was a different Arab. His face was lined and had shrunk. Mohand could read the pain and misery in those lines that radiated around his eyes and from around his mouth. Arab’s skin was grey. His hair was white. Life in the camp had leeched all colour from him.

  Mohand searched his heart and his conscience and knew that he could feel no anger towards the man who once made this shell of skin and bones live and work and breathe. The suffering caused by the colonial French changed everything. It brought greed, jealousy, hate and numerous dangerous qualities with it.

  They engineered a situation where their lives were one big struggle. Arab would have never been driven to behave in such a manner if they hadn’t been so poor.

  Mohand traced the line of Arab’s nose with his eyes and prayed that Allah might be lenient with him.

  He shuffled alongside the body on his knees until he was by Arab’s head and finished by reading some verses from the Koran. He stood up and nodded at the orderly.

  ‘It’s time.’

  * * *

  From the morgue, the body was taken by a small carriage drawn by a donkey to the pier. One of the guards gestured that Mohand could accompany them out to sea. It seemed to Mohand that it would be fitting if someone who knew Arab in life would be present to witness his burial at sea, so he climbed down the ladder to the boat.

  He didn’t think beyond that until the first fin broke the surface of the sea. Within moments of rowing out into deeper water, there were three fins circling the boat in long slow circles. Mohand was acutely aware that the only thing separating him from a row of sharp teeth was the wooden panels of the boat. He watched the convicts rowing the boat and noted how calm and everyday this whole situation was for them. He took his cue from them and relaxed.

  The men stopped rowing at the same instant, as if they had communicated telepathically. Together they wrestled the body of Arab to the side of the boat. Before they tipped it over the side, one of the men turned to Mohand.

  ‘Any last words for your friend?’ he asked.

  Full realisation of what was about to happen struck Mohand like a sledgehammer. His cousin’s corpse was about to be thrown to a group of hungry sharks. He gave himself a shake. When you climbed into the boat, what did you think was about to happen?

  Horrified, he could only shake his head and turn away from the sight. Just before he turned, he saw a grey snout raise itself from the waves. A single eye stared with cold hunger.

  He closed his eyes and sent a prayer heavenward and fought to ignore the furious splashing. Bile rose in his throat. His stomach heaved and before he knew it he was leaning over the side of the boat emptying his breakfast into the waves.

  The other men laughed at his distress. They had been on countless such voyages. It meant nothing to them. For them, this held all the routine of feeding an exhibit at a zoo.

  The splashes behind him seemed to grow in volume.

  Row, guards, row. He sent a silent command to the other men in the boat. The noise was horrific and conjured images in his mind that were unbearable. In desperation to distract himself from what was happening mere feet away, he turned his mind to prayer.

  Praise be to Allah that his cousin would be forgiven his sins. As the noise from the water started to fade, Mohand’s thought was that surely here on Earth Arab had received full punishment.

  NINE

  The Judge and the Gold Dust

  The pain he felt at thoughts from home never lessened for Mohand. For a few months after meeting the two Berber brothers from Oued Amezour, he found himself avoiding their company. On the occasions when he was free to go down to the bar, he would scan the crowd from the safety of the door. If he saw the brothers before they saw him, he would turn and go elsewhere. As he walked away, he would tell himself that the next time he saw them he would sit and talk with them. It would be nice to hear the old tongue.

  Eventually he realised that he was being stupid and that knowing the brothers might actually make his time here less painful, rather than more so, he began to seek them out and allowed himself to relax in their company.

  When he managed to find some wine, he would even invite the brothers to his room and cook them a meal on his small stove. The delight that they showed on these occasions made Mohand feel guilt that he had gone through months avoiding them.

  As libérés their time in French Guiana was difficult. When he could, Mohand would give them some work on the docks, but he already had a number of regulars that he couldn’t let down. The brothers’ position was difficult but so was that of any number of men in the prison.

  The two men did what they could to survive. Whether that meant working on someone’s garden or resorting to petty theft, that’s what they would do.

  One Sunday morning, Mohand was awakened by Aissa knocking on his door. When he opened it, he saw Aissa standing there. The sun was bright in the background, hiding Aissa’s features in the glare. Even so, Mohand could tell from his posture that something was terribly wrong.

  ‘Aissa, what’s wrong?’ Mohand asked and pulled the man into his room. Aissa spun in the small space, at a loss as to what he should do. He sat on the chair. Then he stood up. His face was twisted with fear. His breathing coming in ragged gulps. Mohand’s first thought was that something was wrong with Arezki.

  ‘Is everything okay? Where is your brother?’ he asked.

  Aissa took a deep breath. He held his hands before him as if trying to stop them from shaking. ‘Arezki has been arrested this morning. Suspected of murder.’ He sat back down on the chair. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ He held his head in his hands and began to weep.

  Mohand poured a tumbler of wine for the man and told him to drink it down and then give him more specifics.

  The two brothers had been playing cards with some men. On
e of them was a bad loser. A man that Mohand might know. At this Aissa scratched his head.

  ‘His name is… could it be… Hassan?’

  Mohand was not surprised that Hassan was close by when there was trouble.

  ‘Could be,’ he nodded.

  ‘There was a fight. I don’t know who the men were. They just asked us to join in the card game. We thought… Arezki thought we might get lucky.’ He stopped talking and wrung his hands some more. A shrug. ‘We could always do with some money. Anyway, one of the men didn’t get back up, and Arezki tried to help him to his feet. The man who did it ran into the jungle. The guards came and they took Arezki away with them.’ At this he began to cry again. ‘These other men must have been friends of the man who fled. They told the guard that Arezki… your friend Hassan was one of the loudest.’

  Mohand’s jaw tightened. His nails were digging into his palms. Hassan. Why had he suddenly taken against him? Did he really blame him for the split with Simone?

  He would know who the brothers were. He would know that if something happened to them that he, Mohand would be hurt by it. Was he really that petty? Whatever was going on in the man’s mind, Mohand couldn’t allow bad things to happen to his friends. He had few enough of those.

  One day, he and Hassan would have a reckoning and he hoped it would be one day soon. In the meantime, he had a friend to save and he would do whatever was in his power to do. Even if it meant putting himself in danger.

  Mohand sat down on a chair and rubbed his face with his hands. What he was about to do could get him into serious trouble. He might lose every privilege he had worked for and possibly be sent back out to the logging camps. He took a deep breath and held his hands out. They were shaking. However, he really had no choice; he had to do what he could to save a fellow Berber.

  He knew that this went against everything he had learned since he came to the colony, but he couldn’t ignore the urgency that told him he must do something about this situation.

  He had come to this prison so that his cousin wouldn’t face the guillotine. The thought of another friend in such danger made him sick. He couldn’t, wouldn’t allow anyone else to suffer like this.

  Aware of the tremble in his voice, he gave Aissa some instructions.

  ‘This is what I want you to do. Go and get me some gold dust and don’t let anyone know about it. Once I have the gold, I will take some action. For now, don’t worry about anything.’

  In the colony, gold dust was collected and sold mainly to Chinese shops. Most of the convicts knew where to get the gold dust cheaply if they could find the money. And although the brothers were poor, Mohand knew they would have a secret stash, which they would be saving for an emergency. Surely this was one such situation. He had the gold himself, but by his measure if he was going to take a huge risk, then the person he was helping had to be equally committed.

  The fear faded from Aissa’s face as he listened to Mohand speak. It was clear he had absolute faith in his friend. Mohand stood and wiped his hands on his trousers. Aissa jumped to his feet and, leaning forward, he kissed Mohand on each cheek.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you,’ he said and then ran from the room.

  * * *

  A day later, Aissa arrived at the office while Mohand was working. His presence was announced by one of the convicts employed as a guard. Mohand stood up from behind his desk and walked to the door. As he did so, he looked back over his shoulder and asked his deputy to keep an eye on things in his absence.

  With a confidence he did not feel, he walked Aissa to his room. Once the door was closed behind them, Aissa pulled a white cloth from his pocket. He unfolded it on the bed.

  ‘Here is the gold dust you asked for.’ He took a step back from it as if it might infect him. ‘Is this enough?

  Mohand nodded and offered Aissa a tentative smile. This was enough. Enough to try and bribe someone. Enough to get him locked up if he was found and charged. He nodded again, leaned forward and tidied up the gold.

  ‘You can go now,’ he said to Aissa. ‘And don’t worry about anything. I will get back to you once I have an update. The two men hugged each other and Aissa left the room.

  With Aissa gone from the room, Mohand once again considered what he was about to do. Thanks to the mayor’s party, he had met a few important people. One of whom had become his friend: the Indian judge, Kathari. On more than one occasion he had been invited to the judge’s home, where they would sit and sip from cups of tea and chat about the world they had each found themselves in. Despite his prominent position, the judge still felt himself to be an outcast and he felt a form of freedom in Mohand’s company that he couldn’t achieve with anyone else.

  Before Mohand could persuade himself of the folly of his action, he placed the folded white cotton into a pocket and left his room to start the short fifteen-minute walk to the judge’s house.

  He had a large, beautiful house in a quiet corner of the town, between the beach and the town square. Mohand had deliberately chosen to go at this time because he knew that Judge Kathari would not be at home. He had huge respect for the man, but was unsure of how he would react to the request he was about to put to him. No, it was far better that he speak to the judge’s wife, Ameena. She was grateful to Mohand for the friendship he offered her husband and was clearly fond of him. She would provide a good sounding board for his request, meaning that his question would find the judge’s ears without placing either man in an awkward situation. Normally, Mohand would not use his friendships to achieve any favours, but this was a drastic situation. To help his fellow Berber in such a desperate time, he would do anything.

  When he arrived at their front door, the sun beat on his head remorselessly. As did the voice in his mind that ordered him to go back and not to do what he was about to. For reasons he could not explain to himself, he was locked into this course of action. He knew better than to bribe a camp official. He knew how much trouble this could get him into, but he had to do this. He had to make absolutely sure that his Berber friend did not face the guillotine.

  He looked around to see if anyone was watching. He tidied himself and took a couple of deep breaths then knocked on the door. He was expecting a servant to answer the door and was surprised when the judge’s wife opened the door herself.

  ‘Mohand’, her face brightened when she recognised him, ‘what a lovely surprise. Come in, it’s been too long since we last saw you.’ She gave him a small hug and invited him into her home.

  The house was cool and bright. Richly coloured fabrics were everywhere, giving the house a vivid, yet welcome feel.

  ‘Please, Mohand, come this way. We will have tea and you can tell me all of your news.’ Ameena spoke brightly, conveying none of the curiousity that must have been scratching at her mind.

  They sat in tall armchairs in the main salon. Over coffee and pastries they spoke for a time about life in the colony, the war and all sorts of other things.

  ‘Why don’t we see so much of you these days, Mohand? My husband does so enjoy chatting with you,’ she said in a mock scolding voice. Her face then folded with concern. ‘This is not the kind of visit you made in the past, Mohand. You knew my husband would be at work…’ Her expression sharpened and she leaned forward. ‘You want my husband to do something for you. But something you are unwilling to approach him about.’

  For the first time since meeting this couple, Mohand got a glimpse of the quick mind behind those large, bright eyes. As a dutiful wife, she clearly deferred to her husband in public, but Mohand was now sure that in private this woman was quite a force behind her husband’s decisions.

  The gold lurking in his pocket, light as it was, weighed heavily against his leg. Should he go ahead with his plan? What if she threw him out? She could have him thrown into solitary confinement. While his mind worked, he held his hands before him on his lap, afraid that if he held them out she would see them shaking.

  ‘Mohand’, her voice was low, concerned, ‘is there something w
e can help you with?’

  He met and held her gaze for a moment, while the debate continued in his mind.

  ‘Well, what is it? Are you going to keep me in suspense?’

  Mohand took a deep breath and told Ameena the story of the two brothers. ‘I am convinced that Arezki has been arrested by mistake. I know him very well and I can give you my word that he is innocent. He was pointed out as the only suspect by a man who will do anything to harm me and the people I care about.’

  As soon as he finished talking, he put one hand in his pocket to pull out the gold. He leaned forward, opened her hand and put the white cloth full of gold dust on it.

  She shook her head slowly. By the expression on her face she was clearly aware of the ramifications of this action and equally aware of how things were made to happen in this colony.

  Fear burned in Mohand’s chest. He could only take narrow breaths.

  ‘No, Mohand, I will not take this from a friend,’ she said at last. ‘My husband will help and see that justice is done.’ She refused to take the gold. While she was trying to push the cloth back to him, he turned around and walked out of the room. By the time he reached the door, he was running.

  ‘Mohand, come back. Mohand…’ she shouted. Mohand ignored her and kept running. He reached the corner without looking back once. He ran as fast as he could in the direction of Lacroix’s café.

  When he entered the bar, he was struggling to catch his breath. Lacroix simply shrugged, as if he saw this kind of behaviour everyday and carried on rinsing out the rum tumblers in a barrel of rainwater.

  Mohand sat down and with a shaky voice ordered a jug of tafia.

  ‘Anything else, my friend?’ asked Lacroix as he leaned over with a jug and a tumbler. He filled the tumbler and continued. ‘Some kerosene and a match, perhaps?’

  ‘What?’ Mohand looked up at the larger man confused.

  ‘You look shit scared, my friend. Douse yourself in kerosene. Light it with a match and it’s all over. Meanwhile, we get the bonus of a nice fire to keep us warm.’