The Angels Die

by Yasmina Khadra

  ‘I can already stand, thank you.’

  ‘No, really, what is it you want from me?’

  ‘A real job. I don’t care what it is as long as it’s steady,’ I said in a firm tone. ‘I’m tired of going all over town for peanuts.’

  He shook his head, unable to think of any more interesting propositions. ‘Can we still share everything fifty-fifty?’

  ‘That depends.’

  *

  Pierre introduced me to Toto La Goinche, who owned a shabby café nestling at the foot of Santa Cruz, below an old Spanish fortification. Toto was an unassuming man in his forties. When we arrived, he was carving up a pig in the courtyard of his establishment, a butcher’s apron over his naked chest. He asked me if I knew how to keep a register and I told him I didn’t. He asked me if I could hold my tongue and I told him I could. Those were the right answers.

  He agreed to give me a week’s trial, without pay.

  Then a second week to make sure he hadn’t backed the wrong horse; still without pay.

  At last, he welcomed me into his fraternity.

  In truth, the café wasn’t really a café, the kind you found dozens of on the outskirts of the city, but a clandestine brothel, a seedy inn stinking of adulterated hooch where elephantine whores lured sailors with strange accents and skilfully fleeced them after a botched attempt at lovemaking.

  The first few days, the place gave me the shivers. It was in a dead-end alley overflowing with rubbish where, miraculously, cats and dogs amicably shared the contents of the dustbins and drunks got into fights over nothing. The owner, who believed in a certain decorum, wouldn’t stand for arguments under his roof, but was happy for disputes to be settled behind the courtyard, on a strip of earth leading to a precipice. Whenever things looked like ending in bloodshed, Toto would call on the services of Babaye, a huge ex-convict from the Sahara, a man so black you could barely make out the tattoos on his body. Babaye didn’t have an ounce of patience and didn’t bother to reason with the warring parties, who’d be yelling at each other and brandishing their knives; he would grab them both by the scruff of the neck, knock their heads together and dump them on the ground, certain they wouldn’t be heard from again before daybreak.

  It wasn’t the fights that bothered me – I’d seen enough of them in Graba. The urban animals I feared were the women who worked there, like crocodiles in troubled waters; they were terrifying with their hair in curlers, their faces marked by degradation, dripping with cheap make-up, their eyes black with bad kohl and their mouths so red they might have been dipped in a bowl of fresh blood. They were strange, disturbing, syphilitic creatures, with their bare breasts and their hemstitched basques pulled up over their buttocks; they smoked like chimneys and belched and farted constantly; they were fierce and vulgar, misshapen by the age of thirty but still reigning supreme over the bestial desires of men. They smelt of rancid butter by day and cold sweat as soon as night fell. When they weren’t pleased, they would hit out at random, even throwing their clients out of the window and then drawing the curtains without a second thought.

  I was determined not to go anywhere near them.

  I slogged away in the basement while they were hard at work upstairs, and that was fine by me.

  My work consisted of clearing the tables, emptying the chamber pots, washing the dishes, taking out the dustbins and holding my tongue – because strange things went on in that place. It wasn’t just girls in distress who were picked up in doorways, dying of hunger, and brought to the brothel: there were boys too.

  At first, I didn’t pay any attention to what went on in slow motion in the damp and the dark. While the staff were busy assessing the vulnerability of the fools they were about to fleece, I would shut myself away in the basement among the bowls and the wine racks to avoid seeing anything. I was isolated and ignored, and I was starting to get bored repeating the same actions and tramping the same stretch of floor. Even Babaye only appeared occasionally. He must have hidden in a cupboard like a jinn, only emerging when his master blew the whistle. Then, little by little, I started to realise just how far into the mire Pierre had got me. That café wasn’t for me. I wanted only one thing: to take my wages, get out of that part of the city as quickly as possible and never see it again. Toto pointed out that a contract was a contract, even if nothing had been signed; I would only get what was due to me at the end of the month. So, in addition to the two weeks’ trial, I had to endure four more weeks, holding my breath, rinsing the glasses and turning a blind eye to the horrors around me.

  One night, a dishevelled sailor came down to my hideout. He was holding a bottle of red wine in his hand and swaying all over the place. He was in tears. ‘I could walk on water and no priest would notice,’ he moaned to himself. ‘I could spend my life doing good and nobody would take me seriously. Because nobody ever takes me seriously. “If you went to sea, you’d find it had run dry” – that was what my saintly mother, who I loved so much, said to me once.’ When he saw me bent over the glasses in a corner, he tumbled down the few steps that separated us and, still swaying, took a wad of banknotes from his pocket and stuffed them under my sweater. ‘Fat Bertha, who claims the wart under her nose is a beauty spot, turned it down. She told me she didn’t want my money, I might as well wipe my arse with it … Can you imagine? Even when you earn money by the sweat of your brow, you can’t get laid these days … Do you want it? Well, I’m giving it to you. Gladly. I don’t want it any more. I have bundles of it at home. I make mattresses with it. You need it. It’s written all over your face. You must have a sick relative. Think of my money as a gift from heaven. I’m a good Christian, I am. I may not be taken seriously, but I’m a generous person.’ He fiddled with his flies and tried to stroke my cheek …

  Miraculously, Babaye emerged from his cupboard and threw the drunk out.

  6

  Mekki looked reluctantly at the money the sailor at the café had given me. He wouldn’t even touch it. We were in his room. He had just finished his prayers when I held out the banknotes.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he said, refraining from holding his nose.

  ‘I earned it.’

  ‘You mean you won it gambling?’

  ‘I worked for it.’

  ‘Even a bellboy at the Bastrana Casino wouldn’t earn as much as this.’

  ‘Do I ask you how you make your money?’

  ‘You’re perfectly entitled to know. The Mozabite keeps our accounts and you can check them. Not a penny that’s haram comes into this house. And now you hand me a wad of paper money from somewhere or other and ask me to believe you have a rich man’s salary. I won’t take your money. It doesn’t smell right.’

  Disappointed, I grudgingly put the notes back in my pocket.

  I was about to go to my mat to sleep when Mekki said, ‘Not so fast. You’re not sleeping here until you tell me what trouble you’re in.’

  ‘I wash dishes in a café.’

  ‘Not a luxury hotel? That’s the only place you can make that kind of money, and even then it’s not the right season.’

  I shrugged my shoulders and walked out.

  Mekki followed me out into the street and ordered me to explain myself. I hurried on, deaf to his summons, then, relieved I could no longer hear him grunting behind me, I slowed down. I was furious. I was working hard and I would have liked a little respect. It wasn’t fair.

  After wandering around the alleys, cursing everything and kicking stones, I slept in the open air, on a bench in a park, the haunt of tramps risking the uncertainties of the night. It struck me that they and I were all practising the same self-denial.

  It didn’t take Mekki long to solve the mystery. He must have followed me. A week later, I got home to find the family council on a war footing. There was Rokaya, confined to her bed, Nora, sitting apart but in agreement, and my mother and Mekki glaring at me. They were waiting stiffly for me in the main room, nostrils trembling with indignation.

  ‘You bring shame on
our family, both the living and the dead,’ Mekki decreed, his switch firmly clasped in his hand. ‘First you choose to polish boots and, now, you wash dishes in a brothel. Well, if you have so little self-respect, I’m going to treat you like a dog until you learn to honour our absent ones.’

  He raised his switch and brought it down on my shoulder. The pain made me see red. I didn’t care if he was the head of the family, I grabbed my uncle by the throat and pushed him up against the wall, while my mother looked on aghast.

  ‘You dare to raise your hand to me?’ my uncle thundered, stunned by this sacrilege.

  ‘I’m not a dog and you’re not my father.’

  ‘Your father? You talk to me about your father? He’s the one feeding you, is he? He’s the one sweating blood for this family? That wretch, your father? All right, let’s talk about your father while we’re about it!’

  ‘Mekki!’ my mother implored him.

  ‘He has to know,’ he retorted, his mouth glistening with flecks of foam. ‘Come on, you little brat, come with me. I’m going to show you what filth your pride is based on, my poor, vain, idiot nephew.’

  He seized me by the neck and pushed me outside.

  I followed him, curious to discover what lay behind his insinuations. The streets were baking in the sun. The air smelt of drains and overheated asphalt. Mekki kept walking straight ahead, bad-temperedly. He was inwardly seething with rage. I hurried behind him. We crossed Medina Jedida in the crushing heat, pushed our way through the crowds in the market, which no weather, however unbearable, ever seemed to discourage, came out on the avenue that led to Porte de Valmy and the grazing park before stopping outside the Jewish cemetery.

  Mekki gave me a spiteful grin, pointed to the open gate leading to the rows of graves and motioned me with his head to precede him. ‘After you, as the Roumis say,’ he said with a cruel gleam in his eyes.

  I had never seen my uncle, that twenty-year-old sage who had always been so pious, in such a state of contempt or so pleased at the harm he was about to inflict on me – I’d guessed that he hadn’t brought me here to remind me of my duties, but to punish me in such a way that the consequences would stay with me until the end of my days.

  ‘Why have you brought me here?’

  ‘You just have to go inside and you’ll know.’

  ‘Do you think my father is buried with the Jews?’

  ‘No, he just keeps an eye on their dead.’

  Mekki pushed me into the cemetery, looked around and finally pointed to a man sitting cross-legged on the threshold of a sentry box, stuffing a piece of bread with slices of onion and tomato. Just as he was about to bite into his sandwich, he noticed our presence. I recognised him immediately. It was my broken-faced father, thinner than a scarecrow and in mismatched clothes. My heart beat so strongly in my chest that I shook from head to foot. The earth and the sky merged into one around me and I had to clutch my uncle’s arm to remain upright, my Adam’s apple stuck in my throat like a stone.

  ‘He should have died in his trench,’ my uncle said. ‘At least we would have had a medal to add some kind of pride to our loss.’

  The caretaker stared at us with his rodent-like eyes. When he in turn recognised us, he bent low over his food. As if nothing had happened. As if we weren’t there. As if he didn’t know us from Adam.

  If the ground had given way beneath my feet at that moment, I would have gladly let it swallow me up.

  ‘I hope you won’t go on about your father any more,’ Mekki said. ‘He’s alive and well, as you can see. He’s just a pathetic character who prefers to weed graves rather than sweep his own doorway. He chose the Jewish cemetery so as not to be found. He must have thought no Muslim would ever see him here. Let alone the family he abandoned.’

  He took me by the arm and pushed me towards the gate. I couldn’t take my eyes off the man who was eating on the threshold of the sentry box. An unfathomable feeling spread through me like molten lead. I had a mad desire to burst into tears but managed neither to cry out nor to moan. I simply looked at that man who had been my father and my idol and was now a complete stranger to me. He was still ignoring us, intent on his food. The only thing that seemed to matter to him was his piece of bread, which he was eating with gusto. I hadn’t spotted either surprise or the slightest trace of emotion on his face. After that fleeting glimmer of recognition, his whole face had closed like a pool over a paving stone. I felt really sorry for him, even though I was very aware that of all the children on earth, I was to be pitied the most.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Mekki said. ‘You’ve had enough for today.’

  My strength had given way. My uncle was almost dragging me.

  We left the cemetery and I saw my father close the gate behind us. Without a glance. Without a shred of embarrassment …

  A world had just ended, though I didn’t know which.

  I turned round several times in the hope of seeing the cemetery gate open and my father come running out after me.

  The gate was still closed.

  I realised I had to go, to get away, to disappear.

  My uncle was speaking to me. His voce faded before it reached me. All I could hear was the blood throbbing in my temples. The houses went by on either side in a haze. It was daytime and yet it seemed dark. My feet sank into the soft ground. My stomach felt tight with nausea and I was shivering in the sun.

  I walked straight ahead like a sleepwalker, carried along by my pain. My uncle fell silent, then faded into the background. I reached Boulevard National without realising it and came out on Place d’Armes. There were too many people in the square, too many carriages, too many shoeshine boys yelling, too many pick-up artists, too many women with their pushchairs; there was too much agitation and too much noise. I needed space and silence. I carried on towards the seafront. There was a party in full swing at the Military Club. I skirted Château-Neuf, where the Zouaves were confined, and went down an embankment to the promenade of Létang. Here, loving couples talked in low voices all along the avenues, holding hands like children, elegant women wandered peacefully, their heads full of dreams beneath their parasols, and children frolicked on the lawn. Where did I fit in to all that? I didn’t, I was irrelevant, out of the picture.

  I climbed onto a promontory to gaze at the ships in the harbour. Four freighters were moored at the quays, filled to the brim with corn; their funnels, as red as a clown’s nose, belched clouds of black smoke into the air. A few months earlier, I had come to this place to gaze at the sea; I had found it as fascinating and mysterious as the sky and had wondered which took its inspiration from the other. I had stood on this same rocky outcrop, my eyes open wide, astonished at the blue plain stretching off into the distance. It was the first time I had seen the sea. A painter who was reproducing on his canvas the potbellied freighters and the little steamboats that seemed as tiny as fleas beside them had said to me: The sea is a font where all the prayers that don’t reach the Lord fall as tears, and have done for millions of years. Of course, that painter was trying to be witty. Yet this time, on the same promontory, where nobody had set up an easel, those words came back to me as I once again saw, going round and round in slow motion, the image of my father closing the cemetery gate behind me, and those stupid, beautiful words broke my heart.

  I remained on the promontory until nightfall. I was overwhelmed by grief, and I was sinking into it. I didn’t want to go home. I couldn’t have stood the looks I’d get from my mother and uncle. I hated them. They had known and hadn’t said anything. The monsters! … I needed a culprit, and I wasn’t big enough for the role. I was the victim, more to be pitied than to be charged. I needed somebody to point a finger at. My father? He was the misdeed. Not the exhibit, but the act itself, the crime, the murder. I saw only my mother and Mekki in the dock. At last I understood why they had fallen silent that time when I had caught them talking about my father. They should have taken me into their confidence. I would have been able to bear the blow. They hadn’t done so. And
now I held them responsible for all the misfortunes of the world.

  That night, I didn’t go home.

  I went and knocked on Gino’s door.

  As soon as he saw the expression on my face, Gino guessed that if he didn’t let me in, I would throw myself into the abyss and never come back up again.

  His mother was asleep with her mouth open.

  He led me to the little courtyard, which was lit by a lantern. The sky was glittering with constellations. In the distance, you could hear people quarrelling. Gino took me by the wrist and I told him everything, all in one go, without pausing to catch my breath. He listened right to the end, without interrupting me and without letting go of my hand.

  When I had finished, he said, ‘A lot of people came back from the war hardly knowing themselves any more, Turambo. They went off in one piece and returned having left a part of their souls in the trenches.’

  ‘It would have been better if the whole of him had stayed there.’

  ‘Don’t be hard on him. He’s still your father, and you don’t know what he suffered over there. I’m sure he’s suffering even now. You don’t flee your family when you survive the war.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘That proves that he no longer knows where he is.’

  ‘I would have preferred him to be dead. What memory am I going to have of him now? A cemetery gate shutting in my face?’

  His fingers closed a little more over mine. ‘I’d give anything to believe that my father was still alive somewhere,’ he said sadly. ‘A living man can always come home eventually, but not a dead man.’

  Gino said other things too, but I’d stopped listening to him. Only the creaking of the gate continued to echo in my head. However much my father tried to retreat behind it, I could clearly distinguish him as if in a one-way mirror, ghostly, shabby and grotesque. He disgusted me. I would close my eyes and there he was; I would open them and he was still there, in his scarecrow’s suit, as inexpressive as a wooden skeleton. What had happened to him? Was it really him? What was war? An afterlife from which you returned deprived of your soul, your heart and your memory? These questions were eating me alive. I would have liked them to finish me off or else help me understand. But there was nothing. I endured them and that was all. I was sick of not finding a semblance of an answer to them, or any kind of meaning.