Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the Quiet of Night
June, 1961
Following the Putsch debacle, times went from bad to worse, without respite, like the ten plagues of Egypt.
One June evening, our parents were expected to arrive home late. Zizou and I were on edge, as the boys wouldn’t quit horse-playing at the dinner table.
“Riri, stop teasing Yves,” Zizou exploded. “And you, Yves, bring your chair and your plate over here.”
Yves moved between Zizou and me, casting dark glances at his brother while dinner resumed in blessed silence. I was enjoying the quiet as well as my pork chop when a powerful blast shook the house. My mouth stopped in mid-chew. The boys jumped up with a yelp. Mireille clasped her hand to her heart and Zizou batted her eyelashes.
I swallowed my food as plaster dust flitted down from the ceiling.
The ceiling light bulb swung in a wide pendulum, causing shadows to grow and shrink as they rocked across the room.
Nauseated by the motion and unnerved by the boys’ squeals, I slapped Yves and kicked Riri’s leg into silence. I need peace. Time to think.
In the restored calm, the light gradually came to rest, anchoring the room’s shadows, and I became aware of a ringing in my ears that filtered angry voices rising from the street.
I rounded the table and turned off the light. “Zizou, hide the kids under our parents’ bed.” I tiptoed to my bedroom window to peek into the street. The French doors’ shattered glass crunched under my feet and scraped against the tile as I pushed them open against the wall. A piece of glass dislodged from the window frame and hit the back of my hand, leaving a gash that dripped blood onto the floor and broken glass. I compressed the wound with my other hand and peered between two slats of the closed shutters. I was watching a group of shrieking men run along the street, when Zizou’s hand made me jump with fright. She held onto my shoulder and stood on tiptoe to survey the street. “It’s Saiid’s hammam,” she murmured.
“Sounded like plastic,” I whispered, grazing the lob of her ear with my lips.
Zizou kept her face glued to the shutters. “I bet the OAS got him.”
Saiid had been the owner of the hole-in-the-wall grocery store two houses up, across the street. Through the years, my siblings and I had spent a fortune buying his fly-speckled caca de pigeon. We realized our munificent contributions didn’t garner him the riches he needed to keep his store open when he converted the tiny establishment into a public steam bath.
“I don’t recognize any of these screaming banshees,” Zizou said. “Do you?”
I scrutinized the gesticulating, moonlit shapes. “I don’t think they belong around here.” I turned to my sister. “Zizou, go back to the kids. They must be scared.”
“What about you?”
“I want to see if they are going to attack the house.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“I’ll get Papa’s Mauser.”
“You don’t even know how to use it,” she scoffed. “Besides, Papa doesn’t want us to touch his guns.” She left in the dark, bumping into furniture as she groped her way to the back of the house.
I stood vigil as shouts of anger bounced into the night, hitting hard at the walls of the scattered houses, forcing their way through our shutters. In spite of the heat, I shivered, knowing that if the mob caught the OAS bombers, the butchery of a few nights back would follow.
* * *
On that night, along the road next to the vacant fields behind the compound across the street, terrorists had ambushed four European men traveling by car. The next day the paper reported that when the car’s passengers opened the doors to escape on foot, the overhead light went on.
As I read the account, I pictured the men’s silhouettes emerge against the light like bobbing ducks against the painted canvas of a shooting arcade.
The article reported that one man’s mutilated body had been found later in a far field where he had been dragged. I didn’t need to hear his screams of agony for them to echo inside my head and reverberate forever in the quiet of night.
* * *
Tonight my brothers, sisters, and I might be the ones screaming if the mob hunting for the bombers decided to extract another pound of flesh. For now, their attention was directed away from our house. I joined my brothers and sisters in the back bedroom, and in my anguish remembered God. I kneeled in the dark and prayed for our safety, begged for the lives of the OAS men—men I might not even know—pleaded that He’d give them asylum in the shadows of the moon. “Seigneur, make them safe. And, if you can’t, Seigneur, please make them die quickly.”
I prayed until my knees against the tile floor felt as numb as my tongue after a Novocain shot and my knotted hands as rigid as a hangman’s noose.
I listened for the hunters’ shrieks of triumph when they found their prey, but only heard calls ebbing and flowing as the search went on.
Then, the thought of my parents struck me like a thunderbolt. Of how they might become caught in a pack of raving men when they came home. The car would have to slow down then turn ninety degrees before stopping at our gate. Maman would get out to open it. That would be the moment they’d be the most vulnerable. My father wouldn’t back away to flee without her. They’d be stuck with nowhere to run, no place to hide.
I opened the door of my parents’ armoire, stepped onto the bottom shelf and reached on tiptoe for Papa’s nine-millimeter. I knew its magazine was engaged, and though I’d never shot it, I had watched Pa target practice. Much later in life, I would wonder how it was that Pa had never instructed us on how to handle a gun, never taught us to shoot to save our own lives. But I knew I needed to chamber the first shell, keeping the muzzle pointed down. This done, not without a struggle, I sidestepped to the front door, back skimming the corridor’s wall, as I’d seen Papa do.
I listened to the excited Arab words bounce back and forth. My heart bumped like a blind bird inside its cage while I toggled the switch to the perron’s light. Back glued to the wall, I flicked the light on and off, signaling my parents something was wrong. STAY AWAY FROM THE HOUSE, the flicking light said. My right hand numbed from flipping the switch and my left arm was about to fall away from the weight of the gun, when the paimpon paimpon of ambulances and the screeching brakes of military trucks drowned out the chants of “Kill the roumis. Kill the Europeans.”
I listened long after the pounding of soldiers’ boots and orders to disperse had restored peace in the street.
I listened for claims that some stubborn hunter had rooted out the bombers, but the light breeze only carried the merciful song of crickets and gentle rustle of eucalyptus.
Not one of us slept until after our parents came home and each had given his or her own version of the evening’s events. I crossed myself with total fervor. Thank you Lord, for keeping my parents safe and the bombers free.
At lunch the next day, Papa looked up from the newspaper reporting the events of the previous night and said, “Men from l’OAS learned the hammam across the street was a meeting place for le FLN and left a plastic bomb in one of the stalls.”
“I wondered why so many strangers used Saiid’s hammam,” Zizou mused.
“Did they catch the bombers, Papa?” I whispered.
“Looks like they got away.”
I sighed, “Oh, good.”
Yves looked at Papa, “Is this good?”
“What?”
“That they got away.”
“Would you prefer they had been caught?”
“But they killed people,” Mireille said.
Papa shrugged. “Either we kill the terrorists or they kill us. Which do you want?”
Riri stopped heel-kicking his chair. “So, when the FLN kills, it’s bad, but when the OAS kills, it’s good. Oui, Papa?”
Papa glanced at his brood, turned to Maman and raised his hands in a sign of helplessness. “What am I supposed to do with these bastards?”
Zizou winked
at me and said, “You want the bottles, again, Pa?”
I kicked her under the table, Yves sucked on his lips, and Mireille glared. “This isn’t funny, Zizou.”
No, it wasn’t funny. Not for anyone, as became evident several days later.
Sanctuary
Several days after the bombing at Saiid’s, Ali Ben Salah, one of the neighbors across the street, asked to see Papa.
They shook hands and Ali said, “Why did you not come out last night when we called for Elise?”
“We didn’t hear anything.” Papa’s brow shot up. “What did you want?”
“French soldiers came into our homes. They searched the rooms, looking for terrorists. So we called for Elise to vouch for us. Tell them she has known us all her life. That we are peaceful people. And, since you are in the police, we needed you to speak on our behalf.” Ali paused and looked into my father’s eyes. “But you didn’t come to our aid.”
Papa shook his head with vehemence. “We didn’t hear you, mon frère. Had we heard your calls, I swear on my children’s heads we would’ve come.”
Even though my father had called him, “my brother,” a shadow of doubt crossed Ali’s features before he said, “The families within our walls had a meeting. We are concerned that the soldiers will return one of these nights and we don’t know what will happen then. So, we agreed to ask if you would grant us asylum at night until things calm down,” he concluded, pointing at Tonton Gilles’s unoccupied studio, his stare dark as a bottomless pit.
I wondered how he was aware that the studio was not in use. How much of our private lives did our Arab neighbors know while we knew so precious little of what happened behind their walls?
Ali laid his right hand on his heart as a sign of good faith. “Only for a couple of nights, mon frère.”
Papa hooked his hands over his hips, his eyes staring at the ground at his feet. Then he bowed his head. “I tell you what, Ali, your women and children can move in the studio each evening until they feel safe to sleep in their homes. But I cannot allow the men in.”
“Why not the men, mon frère?” Ali’s dark eyes gleamed with veiled challenge. “Most of us have grown up with Elise. We’ve seen your children grow from the time they were born and you still don’t trust us?”
“You know why not the men.” Papa pulled his pack of Gauloises out of his breast pocket, offered Ali a cigarette, stuck one between his lips then struck a match and cupped his hands to light both. He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “I’d hold my hand over hot coals as proof of my trust in you and the other men.” Papa swept a hand in the direction of Ali’s compound. “But I’ve seen many strange faces around here lately and there is no telling where they belong.” Papa squinted through the smoke. “Can you?”
Ali extended his arms forward, palms up, and shrugged, while the smoke of his upside-down cigarette rose between his fingers. “Laa,” he said, shaking his head.
“So, how am I to know they are not threatening you and forcing you to acknowledge them as part of your families so I’d give them a place to hide?”
Ali touched a hand to his heart again and inclined his head. “Allah bless you, mon frère. Tonight, our women and children will be under your protection.”
Early that evening, many more women and children than I thought lived behind those walls across the street moved in with their bundles, sleeping rugs and mats. In the morning, they went home, only to come back the following evening.
After a few nights, the soldiers not having returned, our guests felt safe enough to carry their belongings home for good.
Later that day, Riri ran to Papa with the news that two men from across the street had walked through our gates and entered the vacated studio. My brother and I followed Papa there and found the men, Hajmed and Magid, leaving the studio carrying a trunk between them. Papa barred their way. “What are you doing here?” he challenged, hands on hips. “I thought I said, ‘no men.’ ”
“Bonjour, Mr. Riri,” said Magid. His smile revealed a row of betel-stained teeth under a thick moustache ending in groomed points. “When they moved out, the women left this behind for safekeeping,” he added, pointing his chin at the trunk he and his friend carried.
“What’s in there?” Papa’s stern voice erased the smile on the men’s face.
“Look, Mr. Riri,” Hajmed said. “It’s only our families’ money and jewels.”
“Open it.” Papa’s order clapped like a whip.
The men exchanged a brief glance and set the trunk down. They bent over and unhooked the leather strap securing the studded lid, which, once open, exposed jewelry, gold coins, and banknotes. “Show me the bottom,” Papa said in a clipped voice.
Hajmed and Magid crouched down, moved the jewels and bundles of bills aside and glanced up at Papa. He gave a curt nod and told them they could close the lid. “How do you dare bring valuables in my house without letting me know about it?”
The men gave Pa a startled look and his voice, brittle as an icicle, went on, “What if one of you decided to keep the lot to himself and the rest of you accused me of stealing it?”
“Oh, but Monsieur Riri, we’d never think you’d do something like that. We trust you.”
“Trust me. My ass.”
“We’d never do that to you, Mr. Riri. We are very grateful for your help.” Magid kissed the tips of his fingers to show his good faith.
Papa gave a reluctant nod, but I could tell he was as angry as I had ever seen him. Why?
We escorted the men and their trunk to the gate and walked up the stairs to the front door. “But why are you so angry with them, Pa?” I asked.
“For all I knew, the trunk could have contained weapons and ammunitions,” he said. “Then I would’ve been an accessory to God knows what.”
I nodded sadly, understanding that in these days of shifting allegiances, one might trust, but not blindly.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Albert
August, 1961
It was the last week of summer vacation, three months after my seventeenth birthday. Maman had taken the bus to Constantine with Zizou and the kids to buy their school stuff. I was preparing the evening meal in idyllic silence and blissful solitude when the little black gate with the mailbox scraped across the walkway. I wiped my hands and went to the perron to check on the trespasser. A stranger looked up from fifteen steps below.
Gosh, he’s gorgeous, I thought, in a half-swoon. The man’s almond-shaped eyes and close-cropped beard framed classic features, and with his engaging smile, he was the spitting image of my conception of the Jaguar Knight in the Mayan story I just finished.
My imagination went on a rampage, writing a novel of its own. Looking forward to forfeiting his life, the vanquished Jaguar knight gazed up in awe at the high priestess—moi—gleaming in the resplendent sun. She stood at the sacrificial altar, ceremonial obsidian knife in hand, all set to carve the Hero’s heart out ….
Yaa, sure. I slipped my hands into my apron pockets, took them out and, for lack of a better place, let them dangle at my sides. “Bon— Bonjour,” I stammered like a stupid idiot.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle. My name is Albert Lacroix. I recently arrived from France and am looking for lodgings. The school’s bursar gave me this address. Is Monsieur Gilles Honninger here?”
“Non,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. Gosh, he wants to move in downstairs. “But I can show you the room. I’ll get the key.” I pivoted on my feet—gracefully, I hoped—and sashayed into the house.
I peered into the bathroom mirror. Lucky I washed my hair this morning. I repositioned the tortoise combs that kept the curls off my face, slapped my cheeks, bit my lips to color them, and grabbed the key.
Past the front door, I traded my usual bounding down the stairs for a more regal bearing, wishing I wore pants—which I wasn’t allowed to wear—or a long skirt—which I didn’t own—to hide my chicken legs. Thank heaven I just shaved them.
I offered my hand. �
�Comment allez-vous? I’m Danielle, Monsieur Honninger’s niece.” Leading the way, I unlocked the door to the front apartment and pulled open the shutters to let daylight in. I stood in the middle of the efficiency studio and pointed. “Voilà. This is the bedroom-living room. The kitchenette is there. The bathroom, over there.”
He appraised the surroundings and decided, “I’ll take it.”
I gazed into the most superb set of gray eyes. Yesss! “Did you say the school gave you our address?” I tried to sound detached, businesslike and sophisticated—all of which I hadn’t the simplest inkling how to do.
“Oui, Mademoiselle. The school bursar did. I am doing my military service as a teacher.”
Oh boy, Papa’s going to LOVE this. His idea of a “Real Man” was one who fulfills his obligations to his country, especially his military service. A Real Man whose fortitude has been severely tested by crawling through mud and across beds of nettles—live munitions whistling by his ears along with the screams of barking sergeants and dying men. And, for good measure, if this “Man” had lived through innumerable battle field horrors, like my pa, so much the better. Too bad. Teacher or not, Albert Lacroix won’t make the cut.
Once “Albert” had signed a contract and handed over his down payment, I gave him the key. He left saying, “Nice meeting you, Mademoiselle. I’ll move in tomorrow.”
The following day, Zizou and I peeked through the slats of our bedroom shutters, elbowing each other for a better view of Albert unloading his suitcases off a taxi.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
Zizou shrugged, “Boff. Not that gorgeous.”
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