by Robert Irwin
Chantal must be here tonight. Certainly, there is a lot at stake. If Chantal fails to appear, then my stock with Jalloud and the comrades will fall. The opera house is, I suppose, small by comparison with those to be found in the cities of mainland France, but it makes an attempt at grandeur in miniature. The gold and red striped wallpaper, the red velvet coverings on the balconies, the cream-coloured imperial eagles in stucco alternating with bizarre human-headed, butterfly-winged caryatids – it seems that operatic culture came to an end in the Napoleonic era. With so much cream and gold, the general effect is of sitting inside a rather sickly multi-tiered wedding cake.
I lean over to Jalloud and whisper, ‘One day, my colonel, all this will be yours.’
He laughs but I continue.
‘No, I am serious. Shall I tell you when I was last in an opera house?’
‘Yes. Tell me when you were last in an opera house,’ says Jalloud indifferently. He continues to look around him.
‘It was in Hanoi in 1955. We were all brought together in the Hanoi opera house. I was among the last batch of those to be repatriated – the survivors of Dien Bien Phu and the death march into captivity. There were some hundreds of us brought in from Lang Trang. What strikes me now is that the Hanoi opera house had the same tatty colonial pretensions as this place. Its balconies were decorated with stucco and gold palmettes, fringed by swords, lances and tropical foliage. The stalls seats had all been ripped out and those of us who could still walk milled about in that area. On the stage the little yellow men in black cotton uniforms yelled out orders and tried to organize us into proper groups. (But that is how I might have described it before Dien Bien Phu. Since Lang Trang I had learned to see them as us and us as them.) There was no usherette, but a man from the Red Cross walked around distributing cigarettes. That was the first as well as the last time I ever set foot in an opera house and it was a terrible moment for me. For the first time in many months I was re-encountering the men I had learned to hate and now, they told me, I was about to be shipped back to the country that had betrayed me.’
‘It must have been awful.’
‘You musn’t be impressed by all this.’
But Jalloud is not really responding. I wonder if it is conceivable that I am becoming a veteran revolutionary bore? I begin to study the programme notes and, despite myself, I become interested. I hate opera. Opera is reactionary, of course. It shows a flattering mirror to the upper classes. The message is that, whether exchanged as babies by gypsies, disguised as troubadours or on the tumbril to the scaffold, true nobility will out and the assembled spear-carriers in the end have nothing to do but acknowledge that nobility. But, now as I begin to study the programme notes, I begin to sense that Wagner’s Ring may be different. My only previous acquaintance with this man’s music I owe to Chantal. The vilest night we spent together was the night she put a record on the gramophone and challenged me to make love to her in time to the rhythms of the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. No two orgasms are ever the same. Every orgasm is a new discovery, but something that was so slow and as painful as the Liebestod orgasm was an unwelcome discovery.
Jalloud is a bright student. He has his ‘bac’ and he knows the plot of Carmen, but, as far as opera goes, that is it. I have a lot of problems explaining the plot of Rheingold to him. But in a box I have the luxury of continuing to whisper once the performance has started. The brooding notes of the ‘ring’ motif inaugurate the primal fantasy, that is the awakening of consciousness, which spirals and rises through the murky waters – yes, I should say it is even the awakening of class consciousness in a world of primitive communism, before man learned to value gold more than love.
Ideology is the key which unlocks all art, so, while Chantal may listen to the horns give voice to a hopeless yearning for the lost citadels of Europe, I hear something different, a lament for the way in which human beings have been sacrificed for gold. Alberic cheats the Rhinemaidens. He is robbed by Wotan who in turn cheats the giants. Fasolt kills Fafner. They all want that ring of power which is profit, this golden ring which turns the wheels of the dynamos and sends the dwarfish proletariat underground to work for their subsistence … There is a price for everything. That is Wagner’s message. And the gods are doomed. The fortifications of Valhalla are no stronger than those of Sidi Bel Abbès. That is why Wagner is great. He has got the enemy’s number.
Act One ends. Freia (Christa Mannerling) is cheered to the rafters. Her presence on the stage reassures the matrons in the stalls. It is possible to be very fat with streaky mascara and still be a goddess. There is no interval but Jalloud, bored, goes for a walk round the balcony corridor. I stay in the box. It is not safe for me to leave the box. When he returns, he tells me to relax (but it is he who is so nervous!). He has spotted a group of people who are obviously the de Serkissians. They are on the same side of the house, two boxes away from us. He says that Chantal looks very pretty. He is even more flushed and excited than before. And I too feel something of his excitement. Revenge! Soon, I shall be revenged! Already to be in the same building as her and she not knowing that I am here, and for me to be closing in for the kill, there is something sexual in this.
Wotan and Loge are reascending from Nibelheim and I am concentrating on the hammering of the dwarfs on their anvils when I am nudged in the ribs. I do not immediately respond, but eventually I turn to see if Jalloud is enjoying this. My stomach does a queer lurch. In the murk it is hard to be sure but it seems to me that Jalloud’s face has turned black and that his head is at a queer angle. I stop breathing for a while and then slowly I turn. Now I see that the door to our box is open. In the shadows at the back of the box stands Nounourse. His finger is on his lips signalling me to silence. Then the same finger crooks and beckons me to join him at the back of the box. Nounourse looks resplendent in white dinner-jacket and cummerbund. He seems to creak a little as he leans to whisper in my ear.
‘Get ready to run, Captain Addict, when I say so. We are going left down the corridor. Stick close to me.’
He slips me a weapon. It is my familiar old Tokarev. Nounourse tiptoes to the edge of the box. Wotan and Loge are preparing to haggle with the giants. Then Nounourse gets a grip on the corpse of Jalloud and hoists it on to the red velvet parapet. He gives voice to a great wordless bellow forcing the orchestra to falter and then to stop altogether. Then with the cry of ‘Algeria shall be free!’ he tips the body of Jalloud down into the darkness of the stalls. Shrieks rise from all parts of the opera house, like birds taking to air. A shot is fired.
‘Run, Captain Addict!’
Out in the corridor of the grand tier, Nounourse has turned not towards the main staircase, but in the other direction towards what I fear may be a cul-de-sac. It is a struggle for me to keep up with him. In fact there is a door marked private at the end of the curving corridor and we charge through it to find ourselves on the fly floor. A stagehand who has been fiddling with the ropes and counterweights flattens himself to let Nounourse pass along the bridge. But I am smaller fry and moving more slowly and he is brave enough to take me by the lapels. I break his fingers for him and follow Nounourse down the ladder. There are three more stagehands at the foot of the ladder apparently prepared to tackle us. Perhaps they are under the impression that we are only rowdy first-nighters? Nounourse and I drop from the ladder screaming at the tops of our voices and they back away, all save one who catches the hard edge of Nounourse’s hand on the edge of his nose: Blood sprays over his overalls. I move in to stomp on his instep and, as he totters, I am about to bring my gun down on his collar bone, but Nounourse pulls me away. We run down a short flight of steps and issue out through the stage door.
Chapter Eighteen
As we hurry along to the bus stop on rue Michelet, Nounourse explains.
‘Jalloud bought me a ticket. He told me that you had to be killed tonight at the opera.’
But that is all that Nounourse is prepared to explain.
‘Later, later.’
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br /> We attract queer looks on the bus because of our formal attire and because we are an Arab and a European travelling together, but Nounourse is in a hurry to reach his flat, though afraid to take a taxi. It is difficult for me to sit still and impassive in the bus. As the adrenalin drains away, it seems to me that my bad leg has been replaced by a ball of fire.
Once inside the flat, he starts yelling at Saphia to get her out of bed and they set to, throwing things in suitcases and tying up bundles of luggage in sheets. Nounourse is sending Saphia to Mtidja where she has relatives. Saphia gives Nounourse one final look of languid reproach. What has her Tarzan done now? We are in the flat for less than fifteen minutes. What takes more time that anything else is that Nounourse decides to hack his beard off, making use of only a dry cut-throat razor.
‘Come on, Captain Addict,’ shouts Nounourse. ‘Or would you rather wait here to see who comes for us first, the flics or the FLN execution squad?’
So we set off into the night walking towards the suburb of Belleville and, as we walk, Nounourse begins the difficult work of explanation.
‘It was Jalloud’s idea that I throw the body down from the box, but when he had that idea he thought the body was going to be yours. That first afternoon when Jalloud and I went for a walk round the block, you remember it? That was when Jalloud was giving me the orders to kill you. Then he was thinking that he would have me arrange an accident in a swimming pool for you, but then when you have your ideas about going to the opera, Jalloud thinks that it will have more effect if you, an unidentified European, are killed during the performance. So there was Jalloud sitting and pretending to listen to the music and look for this Chantal woman, but really he was sitting there waiting for me to slip into the back of the box and then come quietly towards you with my strangling cord.’
Nounourse cracks his knuckles with glee.
‘He certainly got a surprise! I will tell you what he was thinking about you. This is what he was thinking about you, not what I was thinking about you. No offence? You understand? We were walking around the block then and he was saying to me, “Nounourse, this Captain Philippe Roussel, he is a mad dog, one hell of a mad dog. And what do we do with mad dogs? That is right. Nounourse, we put them down. This Roussel is a psychopath. You know what is a psychopath, don’t you? This man is more interested in killing people than in anything else. The revolution does not need his sort. You know, Nounourse, you and me and Ait Ahmed, Abou Missoum, Khadir and the others, we are not Marxists, we are Muslims and of course we fight against the French, but we do not love murder like this man. Besides, I do not believe that this Philippe is a proper Marxist. He only likes adventures and violence, and he knows nothing about ordinary people. This Philippe has ideas in his head, but where do they come from? They are not CP policy in Algeria, nor are they Moscow policy either. They are bugs in his brain,” and Jalloud said that you were dangerous, because you had a will to death – your own death.
‘Of course I am very surprised by what Jalloud is saying, but I am not going to argue with him, for he is my superior officer. Then Jalloud says, “What did you think, my good Nounourse, of what he is telling us about this Mademoiselle Chantal de Serkissian? You thought nothing about it? I tell you what I think. I think that this woman is the biggest bug in the mad dog’s brain. Of course, he is bitter because she denounced him as a traitor in front of his officers, but I do not think that this makes her a fascist. I have never thought it fascist to collect stamps – even German stamps. I am not going to let the resources of our organization be wasted by pursuing all the mad-dog ideas that this adventurist renegade has. Besides, as you can see, he has a drug problem. He is not reliable. Get rid of him for me, Nounourse.”
‘I am saying nothing, just nodding as if I were agreeing with Jalloud. In fact, though, I am a crafty man and I have thoughts of my own. You know I think it is a good thing to kill the French until they get out of my country. So I have decided that I admire what you have done for us. I like you, Captain Addict, that is what I decided then. If you are a mad dog, then I think we need lots of mad dogs to be our comrades. “Do you know what a psychopath is, my good Nounourse?” he is saying, but what does he know about it? He is only a student, not a proper doctor.’
Nothing more is said until we reach Jalloud’s flat in Belleville. I keep my thoughts to myself. Now that I have thought about it, I am not surprised by Jalloud’s actions. I might have given the same order myself, if I had been in his shoes. I respect his ruthlessness. After all he had my ruthlessness, but he lacked my luck – or what the Arabs call baraka. And in an odd sort of way, if I had been killed, I do not think that my ghost would have resented it. I have never served the revolution for personal reward. Quite the contrary. And, when the revolution is successful in Algeria, it will not surprise me if, instead of being thanked, I am swiftly purged. History shows us that after the triumph of communism in any country, members of the vanguard party are among the first to be purged. Such people, because of their work in the vanguard, often have an exalted idea of their status and refuse to accept proper party discipline. They are the products of a particular historical moment. Once that moment has passed they may well be of no further service to the proletariat. If one day my comrades decide that I should be eliminated, I think that I shall accept this quietly. But as for Jalloud’s idea that I have a will to die, the simple fact is I am alive and he is not, and Jalloud was not right about Chantal either …
When we arrive at Jalloud’s flat, Nounourse kicks the door in and he takes money and weapons out of their places of concealment. Nounourse wants to get this stuff out before Jalloud’s body is identified and other interested parties come to search the place. I am mortified that I can find no morphine in the room. But with our loot wrapped up in cardigans in paperbags, we go off to one of the two big hammams in Belleville. It is past midnight, but Nounourse still manages to find someone to give him a proper shave in the foyer of the hammam. The hammam is closing down for regular business, but this is where we shall sleep, on the still warm tiles of the steam room. As I compose myself for sleep I see advancing upon us through the thinning steam a procession of emaciated wraiths in ragged white robes. Silently they move around us and find places to lay themselves down. It is the charitable practice of this and other hammams to allow the beggars of the quarter a floor to sleep on during the cold winter nights.
Nounourse is not quite ready for sleep. He rolls over to whisper in my ear.
‘ “Do you know what a psychopath is, my good Nounourse?” ’ and here Nounourse attempts to imitate Jalloud’s nervous giggle. ‘Jalloud used to talk to me as if I were the chump with the muscles. I heard it in his voice. The oaf who does the heavy lifting jobs, good old Nounourse! But I am not simple at all. I am a crafty man. Together, you and I will do great things, Captain Addict. We will shake this city by its throat!’
Nounourse’s whisper has built up into the familiar boom, and some of the beggars are making timid complaining noises, but Nounourse has not quite finished yet.
‘And you should have heard the vile things that Jalloud was saying about Margaret, Princess of England!’
Minutes later, the snoring begins. I pity the beggars, but I too am very tired and fall swiftly asleep myself. In the morning Nounourse is up first and bellowing for the barber. This business of shaving is quite a trial for him. His honour was closely entwined with all that hair on his face. No longer the Barbary corsair, he more closely resembles the man he actually is – mentally weak and the victim of circumstance. There is, of course, a certain irony in the fact that he has been obliged to lose his beard for the purpose of disguise, while I have been obliged to grow one. My beard makes me look a little like Landru, the sinister lady-killer of the 1920s, but I am not unhappy with it. I enjoy the luxury of not shaving, and, as the growth proliferates, in some strange way I feel myself to be returning to the origins of communism – that is, away from that kulak turned apparatchik, the clean-shaven Khrushchev, with his vile denunciat
ions of Stalin, beyond Lenin, with his thin little beard, back to Marx and the florid profusion of genius itself.
Later in the day, Nounourse finds us lodgings in the quarter, making use of a criminal acquaintance from his pre-FLN days and paying him off with FLN funds from Jalloud’s flat. We do not go out for a couple of days. After a couple of days, we estimate that the police will lose interest in the incident of the murder at the opera. After all, at the moment there are twenty murders a day in the Belleville quarter alone. The FLN are a different matter. It is hard to guess how long it will take them to work out that Jalloud has been murdered and by whom. Fortunately, only three other cell members besides Nounourse have seen my face. None of the other cells know anything at all about me. Nounourse and I agree that it is best that, whenever possible, it is I who go out to do the shopping and to reconnoitre for our next outrages. Nounourse entertains himself by doing press-ups, a hundred at a time, and by running on the spot in the tiny little room. Then he sits and broods, hunched over himself like a great djinn trapped in a little bottle. I am his master now, but, for the time being, I have no orders to give him.