The Moment Before Drowning

by James Brydon

  Martin walked over to where Anneliese was sitting silently and picked her up. As soon as he had her in his hands, he realized that he had no idea what to do with her. He lifted her above his head.

  On the floor, Sarah shrieked.

  “The child is a curse,” Martin said. He twirled her around in the air above his head. Anneliese smiled; her little brown eyes shone. Martin looked at her. For a few seconds, there was calm. Martin stared at Anneliese’s translucent skin and the blond shimmer of her hair, and then he put her down.

  “It’s the mother we want,” he said. “Bring her outside.”

  The three fishermen dragged Sarah out into the street by her hair. She saw none of it. As soon as they put Anneliese down, she closed her eyes and surrendered herself to them. Goff carried a chair out into the street and bound her hands and feet to it. Across the rue de la Grande Baie, faces began to appear in windows. Some wandered into their gardens for a better view. Martin pulled a razor from his pocket and began to hack, slice, and pull at Sarah’s hair. It came out in thick clumps in his hands. He tried to throw it down onto the ground but it stuck to his sweating fingers.

  Goff called out to the watching neighbors: “Punished for screwing the enemy! She rutted all through the dark years! Now it’s coming back to her!”

  Sarah felt the razor burn where it scraped her scalp. She felt her skin burn where the blade dug in. She felt her scalp on fire where her hair was torn out at the roots. Martin stood back to look at her. Blood was running down her face in grimy trickles. It stuck the hairs to her cheeks and neck. Gashes and grazes crisscrossed her scalp. Her hair poked out only in intermittent tufts. Her eyes were still closed.

  Goff took the cardboard sign that he had daubed with tar and hung it round Sarah’s neck. In uneven capital letters it said: CETTE PUTE BAISE LES CHLEUHS—this whore fucks the Boche.

  “Turn her around,” Martin said, “so that everyone can see the sign.” Behind them, anxious, racing footfalls echoed in the street. Grégoire, his face flushed and his heart pounding, came waddling toward them. He wiped the sweat off his brow and the steam from his glasses and, peering through the newly clean lenses, examined the body tied to the chair and the condemnation around its neck.

  “What are you doing?” he gasped as he pulled the sign off Sarah’s shoulders. “This is vengeance. If the purge is going to succeed, then it must be just. Only justice can cleanse the crimes of the past.”

  The fishermen looked nonplussed. Martin stared down at the strands of Sarah’s hair glued to his hands by her blood. Goff asked, “What should we do with her?”

  Grégoire panted and looked around. He handed the sign back to Martin.

  “Rewrite that,” he ordered. “Say: Condemned for Horizontal Collaboration by Order of the Purge Commission.”

  Goff disappeared to borrow paint from one of the neighboring houses and Grégoire took his sweat-stained handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and used it to scrub off some of the blood drying in rusty smudges on Sarah’s cheeks. When Goff returned with the new sign, Grégoire placed it around Sarah’s neck. He took a couple of paces back to better evaluate the scene. He squinted uneasily at the almost-bald woman sitting in front of him, her eyes screwed shut. Eventually, he nodded. “Okay,” he said.

  “How long do we leave her like that?” Martin wanted to know.

  Grégoire pondered. “Leave her for an hour, then you can untie her.”

  A little over an hour later, as the sun slunk out of sight in the immensity of the western sky, Martin cut the ropes binding her wrists and ankles. They dragged her up and pulled her toward the entrance of her house. No one even checked on Otto, still slumped on the living room floor. Anneliese was nowhere to be seen.

  Goff pulled Sarah by her blouse.

  Along the street, the windows were now empty. The gardens were deserted.

  When Sarah finally stumbled across the splintered threshold into her hall, no one was left to see her and she entered the silent house alone.

  Lafourgue shakes his head. He says that Sarah never got over the purge. She became erratic and unstable. Terror had coiled in her nerves. When Otto recovered from his wounds he wanted to stay, convinced that the inhabitants of Sainte-Élisabeth had taken their revenge on him and would now leave him alone. Sarah made him go back to Germany, screaming at him or ignoring him totally until he had no choice but to pack up the few things he had and return to a land he could no longer recognize as the country of his birth.

  Anne-Lise grew up in the shadow of Sarah’s fear. Her mother used to drag her through the streets in haste, her eyes fixed furiously on the ground. Each time there was a knock on the door, a great pulse of adrenaline rushed through her body and she began to shake. Fear burned, tingled, and trembled in every inch of her body. Migraines felt like someone was drilling into her skull. Alcohol killed the feeling for a while, but these were infrequent highs followed by long hours of sickness, shaking, and exhaustion.

  Lafourgue gazes upon the dark expanse of the sea. “Sarah is damaged,” he tells me. “Scarred. Anne-Lise never cared at all about what happened. It was just provincial gossip to her. She wanted to go to Paris to get away from it. But more importantly, she wanted to get away from Sarah. As far away as possible from a woman destroyed by panic and who she could barely recognize as her mother.”

  Is that what Sarah became: someone whose traumatized brain was a laboratory of anguish, and who saw in her own daughter the evidence of a hideous mistake that had ruined her life forever?

  I remain on the dock for a while longer, until Lafourgue finishes the bottle, stands up, and hurls it into the sea. I see it arc out into the night before it crashes against the lightless surface of the water.

  I huddle in my greatcoat as I walk back home through unlit streets.

  * * *

  When I arrive the house is cold and quiet. A crisp brown envelope, delivered by hand, waits for me in the letter box. Inside, an official communiqué informs me that I shall be visited tomorrow morning by Capitaine Gallantin, who will discuss the “events in Algeria” before the preliminary hearing of the military tribunal on Friday. I am instructed that the capitaine is very much looking forward to my cooperation in this matter.

  I don’t want to go to bed. As soon as my eyes close, I feel once again the warmth of Amira’s blood creeping along my legs and see her shocked, blank, staring eyes until I reach out and close them.

  I lie down on the sofa, wrapped in my greatcoat, staring out into the darkness. I take the photo Sarah gave me out of my pocket and, in the faint glow of starlight, look at Anne-Lise and that pale half-smile flickering on her face as she dreamed of tomorrows that would come and save her, bathed in the glow of what must have felt like eternity.

  Day Four

  The house buzzes with a quietness I can’t bear. I turn on the radio and jolt slightly at the hiss of the announcer’s voice. I need the noise. Any kind of words. The speaker seems elated at the news he is bringing.

  “. . . because we are now living through an almost unprecedented economic boom. This decade of ours has become the age of consumer goods. Millions of French households now enjoy such miracles of modernity as the refrigerator, the Citroën DS, or even the very radio which allows me to talk to you right now. And it is not only these feats of engineering which have made our lives better. We are cleaner than ever! Soap and shampoo are selling in quantities never before seen, and personal hygiene has become . . .”

  I turn the noise off and wait until the sound of knocking at the door drags me from the hum of silence. Outside, clutched by the fingers of the mist, is a man in an army uniform. His dark, piercing eyes and hooked nose give him a predatory air. He frowns a little, showing an officer’s instinctive contempt for my slept-in suit and unshaven face. Capitaine Gallantin’s demeanor is coldly professional. Once inside, he places a perfectly ordered file in front of me.

  “Perhaps we can start by examining the information you initially gave to the Algerian police about your d
uties at al-Mazra’a. Before the tribunal, you will need to carefully consider your testimony, and particularly those aspects of it that have been refuted by multiple other sources and could therefore make you liable to a charge of perjury, if not treason. You may still change any details of your statements or indeed ask for them not to be brought before the tribunal.”

  I read over the pages of neat typescript. The words are mine but they sound strange and disjointed. The phrases make sense but they don’t seem to connect to any reality I can remember.

  My work at al-Mazra’a consisted mainly of interrogating suspected members of the FLN or ALN or their sympathizers. I took my orders directly from Lieutenant-Colonel Lambert, who was overseeing intelligence operations in the region. Lambert was especially focused on uncovering and eliminating supply routes for arms. When I arrived at al-Mazra’a in 1957, insurrectionary activity had been increasing dramatically for over a year, and better-armed and better-trained maquis were launching scorched-earth raids on villages with a colonial presence or pro-French sympathies. Recent explosive attacks on two French trains transporting matériel had elevated the stakes of the war and Lambert was determined to respond decisively.

  The words sound oddly calm. Ordered. As if they’d been written by a simple observer who narrated objectively what he witnessed.

  My first suspect was a twenty-four-year-old medical student named Tarik. He had been sharing living quarters with two other students who helped to draft and print pamphlets making violent threats against Algerians who cooperated with the French. There was no evidence to suggest that Tarik had any knowledge of the activities of his housemates. Lambert wanted to be sure.

  When I came into the interrogation room, Tarik was tied to a chair and his skin was glistening with sweat. All over his body, black hairs stood on end. Was it cold down here in the silent earth? Was it the sweat drying on his exposed body? Or was it hypersensitivity? A chill of terror that made his whole body alert, throbbing with the fear of what was to come?

  I looked into his deep black eyes rolling in their sockets. His jaw was clamped shut. I only stared at his face for a second or two but I felt sure he was here by mistake. After ten years in the police I could read the feint of guilt or the simmering of rage in the face of a suspect. Tarik had neither. There was just a blank, uncomprehending stare as if he simply couldn’t grasp what was happening to him.

  For about an hour I questioned him on his relationship to his two housemates. He seemed relieved to talk, gabbling faster and faster, desperate to add ever more detail to his account so that nothing could possibly remain hidden. At times I had to remind him to breathe, otherwise the flood of words would have choked him.

  I reported to Lambert that there was no evidence of a connection between him and the FLN, but that I would investigate the house and gain background information on Tarik from the medical faculty. I was convinced, however, that such inquiries would prove unproductive.

  Lambert stared at me coolly and said “Capitaine, once again I must remind you that this is a war. You cannot go and talk to a suspect’s colleagues, because you are their enemy and they will refuse to speak to you. You do not have the time it would require to search his house and then follow up on whatever you find there. You need to obtain totally secure information from this man within the next few hours. There is only one way you can do so.”

  I tried to explain that I had questioned Tarik thoroughly, cross-checking his answers and returning to probe his statements from different angles, but Lambert cut me off with an impatient nod.

  “Capitaine, you will not get information out of him by asking him subtle questions. How did you imagine that the service de renseignements would work? We don’t worry about the standards of proof required for courtrooms. But we do need to know about armament networks and supply lines before more people are killed by terrorists incapable of understanding the principles of democracy.”

  There was a violent yet absolutely controlled fury about Lambert as he spoke. His blue eyes didn’t blink and appeared frozen in his head. His untanned skin looked fragile. He stood up and walked to the door, each movement economical, contained, yet radiating power. He didn’t need to beckon or to turn around. I followed him anyway. His boots echoed down the corridor and I trailed him silently.

  In Tarik’s cell, the light buzzed overhead. When he saw Lambert come in, his hands began to shake. Lambert said nothing. He simply walked to the back of the cell and turned on a tap above an old steel tub. He let the water run slowly. In the silence of the cell, the trickle of the water seemed to swell to a roar. Lambert stared off into space while the water flowed slowly in the quiet.

  Then another sound started up. An uncontrolled, rapid clacking sound. Something brittle knocking together and grinding. Tarik’s teeth.

  When the tub was finally full, Lambert pivoted the chair around and, with Tarik’s hands and feet still bound to the frame, pushed his head under the surface of the water. The tendons bulged in his wrists and neck as he held Tarik down. Tarik’s arms and legs jerked against the bindings. The surface of the water was a churning mass of bubbles, swirling and bursting.

  Just as Tarik’s muscles began to slacken, Lambert pulled his head up out of the tub. As soon as Tarik sensed the air, his mouth sucked and gasped for oxygen. His lungs seemed to roar and his jaw pumped, trying to swallow all the air in the room. His diaphragm hammered in bursts and forced water out of his throat. His body shook with the retches. His eyes rolled wildly, pleading for someone to save him.

  Lambert tightened his grip and pushed Tarik’s head back down into the tub. He repeated this same action—gripping the head beneath the surface of the water until the body began to relax, then pulling it out into the air gasping, choking, vomiting water, and gulping oxygen—again and again for what must have been half an hour. Each time, Tarik’s head seemed to stay down in the depths of the tub for longer and the seconds of frantic interlude grew fewer.

  I could see that Tarik’s body wasn’t adapting, just getting weaker. With every passing minute, an apprehensive sickness crawled farther down inside me. Each time Tarik’s head went under the water, I was sure that, this time, the breath would die within him. Just for a second, as his head was dragged back up into the air, I could feel my lungs stop too. Panic had infected every inch of Tarik, from his darting, incoherent gaze to his shaking, tensed legs and arms.

  Finally, Lambert placed the chair back in the center of the room beneath the single bulb’s glare. Tarik’s eyes were a wall of silent screams. His lips started to move automatically, murmuring something in Arabic that even he didn’t seem able to understand. Lambert had not spoken a single word to Tarik. He had not asked him about his connection to the leaflets or to the FLN, and when he had finished forcing Tarik’s head down into the water, he simply stood there, quietly, as if he were waiting.

  Eventually the ragged heaves in Tarik’s chest subsided and, although his lips continued to trace out some noiseless incantation, his eyes appeared able to focus on and understand his surroundings. It looked as if he had returned to a state of sanity after the temporary madness of nearly drowning. Lambert nodded, opened the door to the cell, and walked out. His steps echoed down the corridor. I looked over at Tarik and saw that he was shivering.

  A few moments later, it was not Lambert who returned but two young soldiers carrying an electric generator. They didn’t move like Lambert, all ruthless, pared-down motion. They shuffled in. They didn’t look at Tarik either. They began to set up the generator with mechanical motions, as if they were fixing a household appliance. Tarik’s eyes were going wild. They were dilating and racing. His hands and feet were wan where he had cut off the circulation by straining against his bindings. For a second, his lips stopped moving. Then his face fragmented. He began to scream.

  The next thing I can remember, I had left Tarik’s cell and was striding rapidly along the corridor. In the distance behind me I could hear one long howl of wordless, terrified sound: a human voice that
pain had turned into something inhuman. The noise swelled. It rushed closer and closer as my feet pounded the concrete faster and faster to get away from it, as if it were a tidal wave breaking at my back. I tried to outrun it but I knew it was too late. Even when I reached the outside, where the great sky receded infinitely above and where no sound from the warren would ever penetrate, I could still hear that same shriek. I stopped walking. It no longer made any sense to try to escape because that noise was now in my head. I could hear it reverberating in the recesses of my memory, burrowing down inside of me like a virus, infecting me, digging into the circuits of recollection from where I knew it could never be expunged.

  I don’t know how long I just stood there outside before Djamel’s voice startled me back to consciousness.

  “Chef. Chef. You need to come inside.”

  His eyes squinted up at me. I saw his face as a blur: the pinched nose and pointed chin, with a wispy beard tracing a line across it.

  “Chef . . .”

  He laid a hand on my wrist and pulled me after him. Djamel was a Harki, an Algerian who joined the French army to fight against independence. His father was French, and whenever the idea of independence was brought up, he thrust out his chest, his face reddened with emotion, and he cried out that Algeria would never be able to govern herself fairly or well. The French soldiers called him Jean-Michel. Once, I asked him what he would do if France withdrew from Algeria. Wouldn’t the nationalists come looking for those who had thrown their lot in with the occupiers? He looked blank, then smiled at me, although his deep brown eyes were clouded.

  “France will never leave,” he said. “And if you did, then you would take me with you. We fought for you. You would not abandon us. It would be monstrous.”