‘Some of our people have succeeded. Doctors, lawyers, businessmen …’
‘Oh, my God, why don’t you take off your blinkers, boy? Look at the masses begging around you. Your heroes aren’t even allowed to be citizens. This is our country, the land of our ancestors, and we’re treated like foreigners, like slaves from the savannahs. You can’t even go to a beach without them sticking a notice in your face telling you Arabs aren’t allowed. I saw a kaïd revered in his tribe called a lousy Arab by a mere white ticket seller. You have to think about these things, Turambo. The facts are there in front of you. You might try to disguise them, but the truth shines through … I refuse to be nothing but suffering. An Arab doesn’t work, he gets fucked up the arse, and I don’t have an arse that’s big enough. Since nobody’s handing me anything on a plate, I grab a good time for myself where I can. Hunger and deprivation have instilled this philosophy in me: live life as it comes, and if it doesn’t come, go looking for it!’
I had the feeling I was dealing with a pyromaniac.
Sid had chosen a path that wasn’t mine. He scared me. One evening, he actually dressed up as a girl (he had put on a haïk) and slipped into a hammam to ogle the naked women. After getting his fill of that, he started running round the building, looking for a virgin to lay in the laundry room. It was pure madness. He could have been killed in a stairwell. In Medina Jedida, you could get yourself killed for even minor sins. But Sid Roho refused to calm down. The air of the city had gone to his head like a blast of opium, except that he never sobered up. He saw everything from the point of view of his ‘exploits’, thus putting the theft of a piece of fruit and the honour of races on the same level. His morbid self-confidence blinded him to the point where the closer he came to disaster, the more he clamoured for it. He drank where he shouldn’t, which was an offence according to Muslim custom, stole in full view and full knowledge of everyone, and dared to go hunting for women in neighbourhoods where they didn’t take kindly to strangers. He was bitter and suicidal, and was constantly putting himself in danger. I wondered if Rachida, her cousin and the wholesaler were merely excuses he’d made up, big stones he’d tied to his feet so as to sink as deep as possible and never come up again. He seemed comfortable in his descent into hell, as if he felt a wicked pleasure in taking revenge on himself and bringing about his own misfortune. Obviously, he had plenty of reasons to behave the way he did, but what is a reason if not, sometimes, a wrong that suits us?
Not wanting to be a witness to his eventual lynching, certain that sooner or later he’d fall into his own trap, I started declining his ‘invitations’ and saw him less often.
It didn’t take him long to notice.
One morning, he waylaid me near the girls’ school. I’d have bet anything that he wasn’t there by chance.
‘Well, well, Turambo!’ he said, pretending to be surprised. ‘I was just thinking about you.’
‘I have an appointment with the boss of a warehouse. He’s going to give me a trial. Gino is already there to introduce me.’
‘Mind if I walk with you?’
‘As long as you don’t slow me down. I’m late.’
We hurried to Place de la Synagogue. Sid Roho was looking at me out of the corner of his eye. My pace and my silence were bothering him.
Just outside a haberdasher’s on Place Hoche, he stopped me with his hand. ‘Are you upset with me about something, Turambo?’
‘Why do you ask me that?’
‘You’ve been doing your best to avoid me for weeks now.’
‘You’re imagining things,’ I lied. ‘I’ve been looking for work, that’s all.’
‘That’s no reason. We’re friends, aren’t we?’
‘You’ll always be my friend, Sid. But I have a family and I’m ashamed to be sponging off them. I’m nearly twenty-two, don’t you see?’
‘I see.’
‘I’m late.’
He nodded and took his hand off my shoulder.
Under the statue of the general, a blind man was playing a barrel organ. His music made my friend’s distress seem somehow irreversible.
A little further on, again bothered by my silence, Sid said, ‘I’m sure you’re upset with me, Turambo. I want to know why.’
I looked him straight in the eye. He seemed disconcerted. ‘You want the truth, Sid? You’re really not with it these days.’
‘I’ve always been like this.’
‘Precisely. You don’t seem to realise.’
‘Realise what?’
‘That it’s time for you to settle down.’
‘Why work when you can help yourself, Turambo? I have everything I need. I just have to reach out my hand.’
‘Someone will cut it off in the end.’
‘I’ll get an artificial one.’
‘I see you have an answer for everything.’
‘You just have to ask.’
‘My mother says that when we have an answer for everything, we might as well die.’
‘My father said more or less the same thing, except that he died without finding an answer for anything.’
‘Apparently, I’m wasting my breath. You won’t listen. I really have to meet Gino now.’
‘Gino, Gino … What’s so interesting about this Gino? The bastard isn’t even funny, and he blushes when he accidentally looks at a whore’s arse.’
‘Gino’s a good person.’
‘That doesn’t stop him being a bore.’
‘Drop it, Sid. A friend doesn’t have to act like an idiot to earn the right to be considered a friend.’
‘You think that’s why I’m acting like an idiot?’
‘I didn’t say that. Gino has helped me a lot. Friends like him are a rare commodity and I want to keep him.’
‘Hey, I’m not setting you against him!’
‘I don’t doubt that for a second, Sid, not for a single second. Nobody could set me against Gino.’
He stopped dead.
I went on my way, without turning round. I was far from suspecting that this would be the last time I saw him.
I suddenly felt uneasy. In trying to reason with Sid, I had hurt him. I realised it as I walked away. I caught myself slowing down every ten metres, then stopping at the corner of the street. We shouldn’t have parted on a sour note, I told myself. Sid had never refused me anything; he’d always been there for me.
I ran back to where we’d parted company …
The Blue Jinn had vanished into thin air.
*
I looked for Sid in Jenane Jato and Medina Jedida, in the bars where he was a regular, but without success.
After a week, I gave up. Sid Roho must have been playing the fool somewhere, in no way affected by what I’d said. He couldn’t bear a grudge against anyone, let alone a friend. He’d show up eventually, and even if it wasn’t what he would have wanted, I’d ask him to forgive me. He’d brush aside my apologies with a sweep of his hand and, still unrepentant, drag me with him on a thousand dreadful escapades.
But things didn’t work out that way.
I learnt later that I wasn’t the cause of his disappearance. Someone had challenged him and Sid had taken up the challenge. He had vowed to steal El Moro’s dagger in broad daylight, right there in the middle of the souk. The former convict loved to strut around in public with his dagger under his belt, flaunting it like a trophy. And Sid dreamt of getting it off him.
He was caught with his hand on the hilt.
He was first beaten to within an inch of his life, then dragged behind a thicket and raped in turn by El Moro and three of his henchmen.
At that time, a man’s honour was like a girl’s virginity: once you lost it, you couldn’t get it back.
Nobody ever saw Sid again.
4
We were in the cubicle, talking about my next fight, when Tobias opened the little door. He didn’t have time to announce the visitors before they pushed him aside and came in. There were two of them, both dressed to the nines.
De Stefano took his feet off the desk to look more businesslike. The visitors said nothing, but it was clear they weren’t just anybody. The tall man must have been in his fifties. He was thin, with a face like a knife blade and cold eyes. The other, who was short, seemed on the verge of bursting out of his grand suit; he wore a huge signet ring on his finger and was puffing at an impressive cigar.
‘What can I do for you?’ De Stefano asked.
‘Forget it,’ grunted the man with the cigar. ‘It’s usually me being asked for help.’
‘And you’re Monsieur …?’
‘You can call me God if you want to. I fear that may not be enough to absolve you of your sins.’
‘God is merciful.’
‘Only the Muslim God.’
He looked us all up and down – Francis, De Stefano and me, Tobias having left – one after the other, in a silence like the lull before a storm. It was hard to know whom we were dealing with, gangsters or bankers. De Stefano couldn’t keep still on his chair. He stood up slowly, eyes alert.
The man with the cigar abruptly took his hand from his pocket and held it out to De Stefano. Startled, De Stefano took a step back before realising that he didn’t have a gun pointed at him.
‘My name’s Michel Bollocq.’
‘And what do you do for a living, Monsieur Bollocq?’
‘He calls the shots,’ the thin man said, visibly annoyed that his companion’s name meant nothing to us.
‘That’s quite something,’ De Stefano said ironically.
‘You’re telling me,’ Michel Bollocq said. ‘I have an appointment and I’m in a hurry. Let’s get down to business: I’m here to make a deal with you. I saw the last match and your boy made an excellent impression on me. I’ve never seen such a strong, quick left. A real torpedo.’
‘Are you involved in boxing, Monsieur?’
‘Among other things.’ He gave me a sidelong look, chewed his cigar and came up to me. ‘I see you’re more interested in my clothes than my words, Turambo.’
‘You look very smart, Monsieur.’
‘Just the coat costs an arm and a leg, my boy. But you’ll be able to afford one just like it one of these days. It all depends on you. You may even be able to afford several, in different colours, made to measure by the best tailor in Oran, or in Paris, if you prefer, although our suits are just as good … Would you prefer a tailor from Oran or Paris?’
‘I don’t know, Monsieur. I’ve never been to Paris.’
‘Well, I can give you Paris on a silver platter, however big Paris is. And you could walk around in a coat and a suit like this, with a red flower in your buttonhole matching your silk tie, diamond-studded gold cufflinks, a hundred-gram signet ring on your finger, and snakeskin shoes so classy that any arse-licker would be happy to wipe his tongue on them.’
He went to the window and gazed out at the backyard, his hands behind his back, his cigar in his mouth.
The second visitor bent over De Stefano and said in such a way as to be heard by all of us, ‘Monsieur Bollocq is the Duke.’
De Stefano turned pale. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his throat. ‘I’m truly sorry, Monsieur,’ he stammered, his voice barely audible, almost obsequious. ‘I didn’t mean to show you any disrespect.’
‘That would have been very stupid,’ the man said threateningly, without turning. ‘Can I speak frankly? From what I’ve seen, things aren’t exactly going well around here. Even a fugitive with a price on his head wouldn’t want to hide out in this fucking circus. Your gym’s on the skids, your safe’s clearly full of cobwebs, and your ring leaves a lot to be desired.’
‘We lack funds, Monsieur,’ Francis cut in, ‘but we have ambition by the barrel.’
‘That certainly makes up for a lot of difficulties,’ the man admitted, puffing his smoke out over the fly-blown window pane. ‘I like fools who wade through shit while keeping their head in the clouds.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Monsieur,’ De Stefano said, glaring at Francis.
‘Shall we talk business now?’
‘I’m all ears!’ De Stefano almost cried out, pushing a chair of chrome tubing in the man’s direction.
I’d heard of the Duke. It was the kind of name you didn’t have to remember since he moved in high circles, in other words, in a world beyond the reality of people in our situation, but which, once you were aware of it, became imprinted on your subconscious, remaining lodged there in dormant form, so that the first time it was mentioned, the memory of it came flooding back. In boxing circles, people instinctively lowered their voices when the name came up in conversation. The Duke was a real bigwig; he had a stake in everything lucrative in Oran and aroused as much fear as admiration. Nobody was sure of the exact nature of his business, his stamping grounds, the people he rubbed shoulders with. For many people, the Duke was someone to be mentioned fleetingly in idle talk, like the prefect, the governor or the Pope, a kind of fictitious character who was the subject of rumours or news items and whom you were never likely to run into. Seeing him in the flesh had a strange effect on me. The top dogs you hear about are seldom like the image you have of them. When they come down off their clouds and land at your feet, they disappoint you a little. Stocky, with stooped shoulders and a paunch, the Duke reminded me of the Buddha I had glimpsed in a second-hand shop on Place Sébastopol. He had the same solemn, morose air. His round, shiny face formed flabby jowls at the sides before ending in a resolute chin that was almost out of place in that mass of fat. His hairy hands were like tarantulas waiting for their prey as they lay on the armrests, and the gleam in his eyes, barely perceptible above his excessively high cheekbones, went through you like darts from a blowpipe. In spite of all that, seeing him sitting in a worn armchair in our dilapidated cubbyhole in Rue Wagram, where respectable people seldom ventured, was a huge privilege for us. Our gym wasn’t highly regarded. It hadn’t produced any champions for ages, and lovers of boxing cold-shouldered it, calling it a ‘factory for failures’. The fact that an important man like the Duke should honour it with his presence was a rehabilitation in itself.
The Duke puffed on his cigar and sent the smoke swirling up to the ceiling. His stern eyes came to rest on me. ‘What exactly does Turambo mean? It isn’t a local name. I’ve asked educated friends and nobody could explain it.’
‘It’s the name of my native village, Monsieur.’
‘Never heard of it. Is it in Algeria?’
‘Yes, Monsieur. Near Sidi Bel Abbès, on the Xaviers’ hill. But it’s vanished since. A rise in the water level swept it away seven or eight years ago.’
The other visitor, who hadn’t moved from his place since he’d come in, pursed his lips and scratched his chin. ‘I think I know where it is, Michel. I’m sure he means Arthur-Rimbaud, a village that was buried in a landslide at the beginning of the twenties near Tessala, not far from Sidi Bel Abbès. The press reported it at the time.’
The Duke looked at his cigar, turning it between his thumb and index finger, a grin at the corner of his mouth. ‘Arthur-Rimbaud, Turambo. What an abbreviation! Now I understand why, when you’re dealing with Arabs, you can never find the right address.’ He turned to De Stefano. ‘I saw your boy’s last three fights. When he knocked out Luc in the second round, I said Luc was getting old and it was time for him to hang up his gloves. Then your boy polished off Miccellino in one minute twenty. I couldn’t figure that out at all. Miccellino’s a tough customer. He’d won his last seven fights. Had he been caught unprepared? Maybe … But I admit I was impressed. I wanted to be certain in my own mind, so I made sure I attended the match with the Stammerer. And again, your boy took my breath away. The Stammerer didn’t last three rounds. That’s quite something. True, he’s thirty-three, he boozes and runs after whores, and he skips training sessions, but your boy made short work of him, and I was staggered. So my adviser Frédéric Pau here’ – he gestured reverently to his companio
n – ‘suggested I sponsor your boy, De Stefano. He’s convinced he’s a good investment.’
‘He’s right, Monsieur.’
‘The problem is that I hate buying the wrong merchandise and I hate losing.’
‘Quite rightly, Monsieur.’
‘This is what I propose. I believe your champion’s meeting Rojo in Perrégaux in three weeks’ time. Rojo’s young, strong and dedicated. He has his eye on the title of North African champion, which is no easy task. He’s already seen off Dida, Bernard Holé, Félix and that bruiser Sidibba the Moroccan. I was on the verge of sponsoring him, but Turambo’s really come on in the past few months and I told myself the next match will clinch it for me. If Turambo wins, he’ll be my protégé. If not, it’ll be Rojo. Have I made myself clear, De Stefano?’
‘I’ll be delighted to work for you, Monsieur.’
‘Not so fast, my friend. The ring still has to decide.’
The Duke threw his cigar on the floor, stood up and left, with his adviser hard on his heels.
The Angels Die Page 16