The Influence Peddlers

by Hedi Kaddour

  And then, there was the dachshund, almost a hundred yards downstream, finding just what he needed to gain a purchase on the opposite side, climbing out, shaking himself off, running through the grass along the wadi, grass that was taller than he, tail sticking straight up, yapping made hoarse by the water. He quickly found it, the partridge that had fallen on the opposite side.

  “Fucking rifle!” said Ganthier. He was talking, not about a weapon, but about a hunter whose lead shots had left the bird with strength enough to fly off.

  “Kid, sit! Stay!” shouted Ganthier, “Stay!” But Kid dove back in, the partridge in his mouth. Everyone knew that it was going to be even more difficult than before, because a partridge held in the jaws . . . It’s not just the weight, even for a dachshund, it’s because it lets a lot of water into the dog’s mouth, muddy water. Someone said: “All that water, bloody hell, where is it coming from?” After a few seconds the voice answered itself: “And more important, where is it going? There won’t be a drop left for the wheat . . .”

  From time to time a hunter glanced at Ganthier, whose face was livid. Kid was flailing in the raging water, disappeared, reappeared, without letting go of the partridge. Ganthier started walking quickly downstream. Kid wasn’t trying as hard to fight against the current. The group followed Ganthier. A man said: “He’s drowning, he’s not going to make it.” Raouf thought Ganthier was going to jump on him. It was the man at whom the “fucking rifle” was aimed, a fat man, with multiple chins that fell under his mouth, Jacques Doly, the lawyer. The man shouldn’t have mentioned drowning; he should have kept quiet; but he hadn’t dared respond to Ganthier earlier, and now he was managing to do even more harm than with a response, while seeming only to be making a statement, because saying, “He won’t make it,” is not just a statement about the disaster; it was a summoning of it. Ganthier controlled himself.

  They saw Kid less often now. At one point there was a bend in the wadi. It brought the dachshund closer to the shore. He put a paw on a root. Ganthier ran to him, but Kid was sent back into the current. One of the pointers barked, its voice broken; another whined, as if he, too, knew what was happening to Kid; he didn’t howl at death because dogs know that that bothers the masters, but it was as if he were. And his master shouted: “Shut the hell up!” Some hunters stopped, out of breath. They didn’t really know how Kid was doing it. Going over, okay, it was the hunting instinct, the desire for the prey. Maybe also a dachshund desire, to show the other dogs, the pointers, the aristocracy of hunting, what one can do when one is small, with large ears and a ridiculous voice. It was perhaps for that reason that Ganthier hadn’t restrained his dog. He knew him; he knew what he was capable of. It was dangerous, but something in Ganthier perhaps couldn’t resist the idea of letting Kid show what he could do. Hunters are proud of their dogs, and the dogs are proud of their masters: that’s why some of them dive in when they shouldn’t. But the return? Why? It wasn’t fear. Some masters beat their dogs if they’re late retrieving; they turn them into cringing lackeys; but no one had ever seen Ganthier beat a dog, or a worker, either, for that matter. And he was crazy about his Kid.

  Later, when they talked about this story, people said that the dog was stupid to have tried to cross again, that Ganthier would have stayed for days on the opposite side waiting for the waters to calm. No, Montaubain said, Kid wasn’t stupid. Ganthier had spent years training him to retrieve, a foam ball when he was a puppy, then his first baby bird, exchanged for effusive petting, and his first quail, a bit chewed up. He had learned quickly, and it turned into not only his duty but his joy, to return to his master with his mouth full, and he wasn’t going to give up that joy for some silly wadi whose water was still violent, even at the cost of drowning. Death in joy, even dogs can experience that, Montaubain later said, because otherwise death is really too awful. Others sensed that he was thinking of something else.

  When he finally reached the bank of the wadi Kid dragged the partridge to Ganthier, then collapsed in a single movement onto his side. He vomited yellow water in jerky movements with gagging sounds. He couldn’t get up. Ganthier threw the partridge aside. Raouf looked at it a moment. It was lovely, almost a pound, a red beak, white neck circled with black, the chest grayish lavender; the feet were also red. The guy who had killed it badly didn’t dare come closer.

  The hunters left along the wadi. Raouf and Montaubain stayed with Ganthier, who was kneeling down. He was talking softly, caressing Kid’s side. Kid still couldn’t get up and breathed with difficulty in between bouts of vomiting. Montaubain’s pointer was whining. “Shh!” said Montaubain, and Ganthier:

  “No, it’s good that he hear him, too.” Ganthier repeated: “Come on, my friend, don’t give up!” His voice was becoming increasingly resigned. Then the tone changed. Raouf and Montaubain understood that Ganthier was now speaking to them. Ganthier spoke of Kid while caressing him, a sort of funeral oration: Kid came to this country when he was three months old. He is incredibly resilient. He goes for miles around the property every day, the ground, the stones. He’s the only dog who never comes back with bloody paws. He was very good with the partridge, as long as you don’t ask the impossible of him. I didn’t ask, I didn’t want him to cross. Ganthier picked up some stones, showed them to Raouf and Montaubain, slate. Poor earth, that makes the wild game calculating, hardy . . . That partridge . . . it knew that it had to put the wadi between it and the dogs . . . It knew . . . Half-dead up there, it still found a way . . . Ganthier’s voice cracked. He looked up at the sky until his eyes hurt. They could hardly hear Kid breathing. It was now very hot, a burning air, without the tension of the hunt.

  “Let’s go home,” said Ganthier, picking up his dog. He left striding briskly. Raouf picked up the partridge—its warmth surprised him—and he and Montaubain followed behind Ganthier. After a moment Ganthier began to stumble as if he couldn’t see in front of him. Raouf understood: tears. He gave the partridge to Montaubain and took Kid. When they arrived at the cars Raouf looked at the two soldiers who were still standing guard, giving them a steely look. He put himself in their place, in their heads, The caïd’s son is carrying the colonist’s dog. He searched in his memory for an elegy for a hunting dog, a poem by Ibn Rabi’a, ghodfan dawajina qafilan a’samouha, dogs with drooping ears, thin sides . . . and who can die under the horns of gazelles. That’s what he was going to recite to the soldiers, a tribute to dogs written by a lord, but he wasn’t sure they would understand that fourteen-centuries-old Arabic. He didn’t say anything. For those men, the dog was a bad animal, one that attacks angels sent from heaven. Ganthier said to Raouf:

  “They’re not happy, but they are regaining some pride at your expense.”

  He took his dachshund back. He always had this reflex: as soon as he felt that some distance was settling between Raouf and the common people he made him feel it. Raouf was a bit mad at Ganthier, but he didn’t respond. Montaubain put his hand on his shoulder, for a moment, then he joined the chauffeur in front with his pointer, who was still whining. Raouf and Ganthier got in the back, Kid between them on the back seat, half-wrapped in a towel. “Let’s go!” said Ganthier to his chauffeur. The car took off quickly. Kid was now having silent convulsions.

  42

  AN EDIFYING SPECTACLE

  In the capital, after his meeting with Trillat, Laganier paid a visit to his colleagues at the Renseignements généraux. He told them of his interest in their informant in Nahbès. The colleagues said to him: “Belkhodja? We can even give him to you. He’s no longer of any use to us!”

  Belkhodja had become poor, a poor man who didn’t appear to be but who depended entirely on the assistance he was given. He went only rarely to the European city. He lived deep within the medina of Nahbès, where a servant of Si Ahmed came every week to pay his tab at a cheap restaurant. Belkhodja had to survive. He was the living testimony of what it would cost someone to cross Si Ahmed. “And it’s not good if you’re seen begging too often,” the caïd had tol
d him.

  Belkhodja had understood what was in that too often. He had to choose the occasions, preferably when people were leaving the great mosque once a week, without seeming overly poor, to beg without begging, just to receive the discreet alms of some believers who had once known him, nothing more, but those were the conditions for receiving the more substantial help that the caïd gave him—he had to appear in a state of need before the community . . . And so when they saw him, people could be reminded of the sins that Belkhodja had committed. There was alcohol, of course, and drugs, and gambling, and whores, and unreimbursed debts, but that wasn’t the worst: the worst was to have come up against Si Ahmed. They didn’t know exactly how, but it had to do with that hasty departure of his son, yes, more than a year ago. It was said that through vengeance Belkhodja had denounced the caïd’s son to the French police, in the capital, perhaps not denounced, but he had at least committed some guilty indiscretions, or really did denounce him, and wrongly. The caïd’s son wasn’t harmed, nor was his father, but people weren’t sure, and young Raouf had perhaps left voluntarily to discover Europe, and it did him a lot of good, by the way, as did his year in Paris. He has been much less agitated lately. He was even heard saying that he was no longer interested in politics; the country wasn’t yet old enough for politics; he wanted to become an observer. That didn’t seem to be a true profession, but it was less dangerous than being a Bolshevist or a nationalist.

  The caïd kept Belkhodja’s head above water, and in exchange Belkhodja agreed to beg, rarely, but well. Sometimes he even had the illusion of being a man like anyone else, upright, affable. He said hello to an old acquaintance, led the conversation, played at being someone who is free, laughed, forgetting that the steel rims of his glasses were held together with black thread, but one thing reminded him of what he truly was: he no longer dared go near his former shop or La Porte du Sud. The little band at the café knew everything.

  Out of caution, and also so as not to recall his flight, the young men pretended to have forgotten Raouf’s denunciation, but something else weighed on them: the police raid at the café that Laganier had organized, their exit in handcuffs, like criminals, blows by gun butts and knees, and interrogations, and for the ones who didn’t have a social status, being beaten with a stick on the bottom of their feet, which led them to believe that Laganier was taking his revenge on them for not being able to put his hands on the caïd’s son. He had even interrogated some of the young men himself, including Karim, using a new technique imported from Paris. It didn’t leave any marks, blows to the head using a thick commercial phonebook with a soft cover.

  “I’m not asking you much,” Laganier had said, “I know you’re a nationalist, but not rabid. I’ve got nothing on you. What I would like are two or three precise things on the connections one of your friends has with the Reds, you know who I’m talking about?”

  Karim didn’t say anything. Then Marfaing put a stop to his deputy’s excesses:

  “If you keep going at them they’re going to stay in the Arab city. Can you keep an eye on them there as well as you do here?”

  It would have been difficult for Karim and the others to spit on the ground in front of Laganier, but to do so in front of Belkhodja, or even on Belkhodja himself, would have been a well-deserved pleasure. And so Belkhodja avoided giving them the opportunity. He felt safe only in the old city, where he now had the time to stroll and talk with the people who sometimes forgot to turn their backs on him. He would sometimes stop in front of a storyteller on the square, or in front of an argument between a vegetable merchant and his vendor, the shock of a driver whose cart had lost a wheel, the crowds in front of a brand-new Citroën bus. He watched, listened, escaped for a moment from the despair of the poor. There was also the market where he was perfectly friendly and talked with the merchants while casually putting a hand on a few dates, a peach, a half-slice of watermelon. He examined what he had picked up, as if ready to put it back if it wasn’t of the desired quality, then quickly ate it and left saying good-bye. Around noon he went to the harbor, at the hour when the fishermen were finishing up, dropping little red mullets that a beignet vendor, a bit farther away, allowed Belkhodja to dip into his boiling oil.

  Around five in the afternoon he went back to his quarter, a square, with a hammam and an oven, the flames of the oven also heating the stones of the hammam. Belkhodja was struck by the good smell of grilled lamb and bread that came out of the oven, remembering the time when, in his house, his table was always full. He also passed in front of kids who laughed and shouted, and threw stones on the roof when they spotted a cat. Belkhodja knew why: the cat is a domestic enemy; it eats rats, but it also takes the meat that a maid has left unattended for two minutes in the courtyard, under a cloth, and the maid would have bruises for two weeks. So when the kids can spot a cat that doesn’t belong to any house, a true thief, they go after it. Sometimes they succeed in cornering the cat on a roof, hidden behind a chimney, and they bombard the roof with stones, which always provokes the fury of the people who live below, especially when the roof is covered with tiles. The kids have to work quickly. They have to finish the cat off before a man comes out of the house and gives them all a good slap. The worst is when you throw stones while watching for the man to come out, watching the front door of his house, and the man comes out from behind, around the corner of the street, and becomes a man who walks quickly while picking a kid up by his ear, and the kid moans, cries, asks for his mother. It won’t do any good to call for your mother: you have neither father nor mother. Those kids of the street, most often, don’t have a true family. They come from the countryside when it has been very dry for two or three years in a row, not really come, rather they are deposited, abandoned, and forgotten, and they are called orphans because one mustn’t abandon one’s child. If you do you are cursed. So you “confer” him, and forget him. To him you are dead. He’s an orphan, and a man can then pick him up by his ear without incurring the anger of a known family. And once again Si Azzedine caught one. He had a heavy hand. The kid was shrieking. His ear was bloody, but he was at a point in his life when it wasn’t so bad to be picked up by the ear, because at least it was an adult who had caught him, in public.

  When it was the teenagers in the area who caught one of the throwers it could go a lot worse, and the kid might find himself in a sort of cellar, with two or three of them, punches raining down. The kid would shout. They would stick a rag in his mouth, more punching, and one of the teenagers would finally say: “That’s enough, he’s softened.”

  “Yes,” says another, “He’s a little softie!”

  The teenagers would laugh and calm down, their voices nicer: Don’t cry. They take the rag out of the kid’s mouth, give him something to drink: It’s over, you swear you won’t do it again? The kid swears, a hundred times, and when he swears the teenagers laugh, saying that he really should do it again, for the fun of it—that is, for their fun, to come back and see them. And they give him more water, a piece of bread. It’s gritty, it must have been lying on the ground. The teenagers continue to laugh, kindly: Did that make you hungry? Eat! One of the teenagers opens a can of sardines: Go on, take one, I’m sure you like sardines in oil, virgin oil. More laughter: You’ll see the good it does. They hold out the can. He takes a sardine: Do you like sardines? Is it good? And one of the teenagers says to the others: You see, he took the biggest! Laughter, the kid is doing better. They give him more bread to dip in the sauce. They take back the can: Don’t soak up all the oil, we’re going to need it. More laughter. They put the rag back in the kid’s mouth, and later, if he tells anyone about what happened, he’s a goner.

  When Belkhodja was a child he had a family. He had thrown stones at cats but had escaped those sorts of reprisals, and now he felt sorry for the hunted beasts. He shook his head, snorted, looked toward the hammam. Stones continued to rain down on the tile roof.

  The former merchant felt a presence on his left. He didn’t move. A European eau d
e cologne, he turned his head: Laganier. He said hello. Laganier also said hello with a nice smile while sizing him up. Belkhodja’s features were drawn, his eyelids drooping to his cheekbones, torn clothing, dirty shoes, Does this Arab know he’s at the end of the road? No, and he must be told the opposite, and we must hurry to use him before he dies . . . Laganier congratulated Belkhodja on his appearance. Belkhodja returned his smile. After a few minutes Belkhodja moved a few steps away from Laganier. He didn’t want to seem to be with him, but he couldn’t turn his back on him, either. Between moving his feet and two or three movements of his head and shoulders to the right, he managed to place six feet between them, a space that Laganier cheerfully filled by taking Belkhodja’s left arm while pointing out with his other hand a kid armed with a slingshot: “They’re having fun, but they’re going to get in trouble, it’s not worth it!”