The high ceiling, the chandelier, the mouldings, the gilding and especially the shiny floor brought back bad memories for Krim, for whom the Republic had mainly appeared in the form of courtrooms up until now. He took his place next to Slim and held the bride’s mother’s gaze; in it he could detect a particularly unabashed glare of contempt.
She was quite obviously a nasty specimen, one of those cantankerous women who latch onto any opportunity to humiliate fellow human beings. Krim guessed this from the enormous jewels she displayed wherever they could be attached, but also and especially from the way in which she constantly readjusted the bracelets around her puffy wrist. She wore a dress of pink chiffon with loud stripy motifs spread over three layers of flounces; Krim had heard his mother and his aunts speak of these flounces in very disparaging terms.
Beside this lady, the one who had to be her eldest daughter displayed her fat thighs in a short kaftan-like dress, held together by a belt embroidered with golden pearls through which, sadly, you could see her pistachio petticoat. Krim also observed the oriental twists on a dress in the second row, with its leopard-print silk side panels, and reached the conclusion that all these Oranese women were repellent because they were evil, and not the other way round as he had first thought.
The deputy mayor came in from the left and Krim saw, for the first time close up, the woman whom Slim was going to vow to spend the rest of his life with. He could only see her in quarter profile: her hair was masked by the veil of her long white dress and her eyes were betrayed by the perspective, which made them appear bigger than they really were. But there was no doubt she was pretty.
She probably benefited from the contrast with the fat and vulgar women in her family, but there was also, as he noticed when she was introduced to him later, a real singularity to the prettiness of her face: it was open and generous, simple and clear, with a protruding chin but remarkably symmetrical features, eyes that were almost spherical but lips that were full without being fleshy, and above all a piercing disposition that conferred on the whole a certain boyish charm.
‘Okay, let’s begin, eh?’ the deputy mayor declared.
During his entire speech Krim couldn’t take his eyes off the bride. When her name, Kenza Zerbi, was mentioned, he delighted in seeing her look down and smile stupidly like a schoolgirl being praised in front of the class.
When Krim had to sign the marriage register, he was distracted by the sound of a motorbike on the main street outside: the acceleration in E flat was about to become an E natural. First studying Slim’s signature, which was supple, elegant, as gentle as his voice, he put his own in the appropriate boxes, in his big left-handed scrawl that hadn’t even earned him a middle school diploma.
‘I’m not going to keep you any longer,’ concluded the deputy mayor after three quarters of an hour, his dry bureaucratic cheer completely out of place amidst the sobs and the sniffling heard throughout the hall. ‘I wish only to say that this is quite a special day, on the eve of quite a special day, and that, well, I wish you both all the best. You may now kiss the bride!’
There was a moment of unease that seemed to go unnoticed by the minor city councillor, who was already putting away his papers: it was out of the question for young married Muslims to kiss in front of the entire family. So Slim lifted Kenza’s veil, a little clumsily but not without gentleness, and placed a chaste and quick peck on her scarlet cheek.
On the way out, Rabia, who had shed her little tear, found Krim sitting on the arm of a bench, a cigarette behind his ear and thumbs in the hollows of his eyes.
‘This all reminds me of Dad. We got married here, you know, in the same hall, just here, all the same, a deputy mayor … Ah …’ As he wasn’t reacting, she added, ‘Are you all right, Krim? You look pale.’
‘I’m starting to get a headache.’
‘You want me to find some aspirin?’
‘No, no, forget it.’
‘You sure? Come with me.’ She took him by the shoulder and eyed their surroundings as if what she was about to reveal was a state secret. ‘We’ll go to Granny’s, okay, and that way we can go directly to the party afterwards. But Uncle Bouzid’s going to take you somewhere in the meantime, and you can join us later with him …’
Krim sighed bitterly. ‘Okay, what now? Can’t you leave me alone for two minutes?’
For the first time in months, Rabia didn’t answer back. Instead, she settled into a silence that took a lot of effort, until it became as comfortable as an armchair from which she could make her son feel guilty without doing anything but wait.
‘Okay, go on,’ lamented Krim, ‘now you’re the martyr.’
Rabia took out a tissue and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. It was a revelation for Krim: it had taken him eighteen years to realize that if you gave a tissue to snivelling women at the movies, it wasn’t so they could blow their noses; it was so they could dry their tears before they made their mascara run. This small discovery made him curiously melancholy. Everything therefore had a purpose in this sad world, everything its place: there were two witnesses for both the bride and the groom, just in case, and handkerchiefs to prevent nature from tearing the female mask away.
‘You’re behaving weirdly these days, Krim. How come you no longer ask me for money?’
‘What, you’re telling me off for not asking you for cash?’
‘You’re not being indoctrinated, are you?’ Rabia inquired, grabbing his chin. ‘Look at me, are you being indoctrinated?’
‘Yeah, that’s right, I pray five times a day.’
‘What do you do in the cellar with Fat Momo?’
‘What do you think, we pray.’
‘Watch out. Don’t do your ke’ddeb about getting indoctrinated. Mind my words, Islam’s like a cult, wallah, they’re all the same. Anyway, what do you think all religions are about? They’re cults in disguise, my son, what do you think? Because let me tell you something …’
But Krim didn’t listen to the probably harebrained explanation that followed; he had gone into I acquiesce mode and now only heard the peculiar little music of his mother’s chattering, a variation on a minor, Eastern chord, four notes she sometimes sang one after another – lo lo lo lo, D A C-sharp D – in order to criticize someone who had no shame, or a shocking situation that everyone else had chosen to accept.
Krim felt his mobile vibrate. He checked the text he’d just received and had great difficulty in hiding his dismay from his mother, who, thankfully, was too absorbed in her own monologue to notice that her eldest son’s knees were trembling and his ears bright red.
Received: Today at 5.59 p.m.
From: N
Good news, bad news. Mouloud Benbaraka will be at the party tonight, had to be expected. I spoke to him just now but watch out all the same. And no silly stuff. This is not the day to get even. OK?
3
Wrong Number
Granny’s neighbourhood, 5.45 p.m.
Uncle Bouzid didn’t have his car, so Krim had to walk dressed as a penguin through the whole of the city centre. He caught a few smiles that were possibly mocking, but he didn’t know exactly what of, seeing as he had more than one reason to be ashamed: his suit, which now seemed atrociously out of place; the way his uncle walked, chest out, chin held high, casting his gaze from left to right like a building site foreman, confident, self-satisfied and haughty, as if enthroned on an elephant.
‘We’re going to take advantage of you looking all clean and proper, okay?’
They marched back up to Granny’s neighbourhood, past the big black silhouette of the theatre, La Comédie de Saint-Etienne. Past blocks of Stalinist flats where indefatigable government agencies remained amidst construction sites and rows of low, dilapidated houses. It was less hot than on the square; Krim even thought he could feel a sharp, spring-like breeze on his cheeks. When they arrived in front of the butcher’s shop, Bouzid, who hadn’t looked at Krim once, took him by the shoulder and encouraged him to enter. The windows were daubed
with photos of Chaouch, and inside the butchers wore CHAOUCH FOR PRESIDENT badges on the lapels of their white tunics.
The owner hauled out a headless, footless, skinless hulk of frozen sheep from the walk-in. While chatting up the old couple it was intended for, he began chopping up the carcass with vigorous manoeuvres, using all sorts of knives and even a saw for the bones. He had not even glanced at Bouzid since he’d come in. Krim looked up at his uncle and noticed on the one hand that he was blushing and on the other that he had extremely small ears. In order to look less stupid, Bouzid turned to Krim and pretended to continue their conversation.
‘And? How are things?’
‘“How are things?”’
‘Yeah, what’s new? Is it true you’re going to be taken off the job centre register?’
Krim turned his head and began to chew his lips. All this meat made him ill at ease, but not as much as his uncle’s flushed, hostile, almost hysterical face. There was such a contrast between his angry prophet-like eyebrows and the casual tone he was trying to adopt that Krim seriously wondered if he wasn’t a bit mad. His mother said that often, but she would immediately correct herself by invoking the Nerrouches’ infamous hot-bloodedness, which characterized his family as surely as the hooked nose and the propensity to make mountains out of molehills.
‘And now there’s something you need to learn, dalguez, you’re no longer a kid: your mother, you must understand, is going to start her life again one day, that’s the way it is, with a good man, completely honourably.’
Krim deliberately tuned out this last sermon. He concentrated on the tram bell that he technically couldn’t hear, given their distance from the overhead tracks, yet it rang right into the heart of his consciousness, like a promise of catastrophe.
There remained only a fleshless carcass on the butcher’s worktop. The butcher warmly thanked the couple but downgraded his smile for his next customers. Clearly, something was amiss.
‘Salaam aleikhoum, Rachid.’
‘Salaam,’ replied the butcher, on his guard.
‘You remember, last week at the mosque you told me you were looking for an apprentice?’
‘Yes, I remember very well.’
Rachid was a bit older than Bouzid. The shop belonged to his family, the richest Kabyles in Saint-Etienne, according to Rabia (‘They’ve got millions,’ she said, emphasizing the mi). It was perhaps an illusion fed by this reputation, but Krim found that this butcher indeed had a bourgeois air about him: pinched lips, well-coiffed greying hair, a nose too fine to be honest. His mother also claimed that they were Harki descendants.
When Rachid came out of the little room where he’d washed his hands, Bouzid didn’t know what to do other than repeat what he’d just said. ‘So last week you told me …’
‘Yes, I know what I said.’ Rachid wasn’t even looking at him. He pretended to put away his butcher block and carry out little tasks that you didn’t have to be an apprentice butcher to see were pointless.
Bouzid murmured in Krim’s ear: ‘Go and wait for me outside, go.’
Krim stepped out and lit a cigarette.
Once he was sure his nephew was looking elsewhere, Bouzid raised his voice. ‘What’s happening, Rachid? Why do you show me no respect in front of my nephew?’
Rachid threw a blank look towards his assistant. There weren’t any other customers and the latter understood that it was better if he disappeared into the back of the shop. Rachid waited for him to close the door, then undid his apron. ‘I’m sorry, Bouzid, but I’m not going to be able to help you.’
‘Yeah, and why is that?’
‘I’m sorry, and I’m going to ask you to go and buy aksoum elsewhere. You’re no longer going to be served here, I’m sorry.’
‘Stop telling me you’re sorry and tell me what’s going on!’
You could sense from the beginning that Rachid’s calm was fake and that he could explode at any moment. ‘It so happens that I’ve heard a few things, that’s what’s going on. Listen, we all have our own lives and I don’t want to be judgemental, but it just isn’t right, wallah, it’s not right.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The cards! What does all this mean, reading cards for people and ripping them off? My aunt, miskina, she’s got Alzheimer’s and yet your mother, Khalida, takes advantage of it to read cards for her? Wallah, I’ve always respected you, you were a good family, your father – ate ramah rebi – was a good man, respectable, as they say, but this is too much, I swear to you Bouzid, it’s haram.’
Bouzid was dumbfounded. He felt – or at least that’s what he’d recount a quarter of an hour later to his sisters in Granny’s kitchen – that if he stayed in front of this butcher a second longer he was going to kill him. His sisters clustered around him would have no problem believing him. He’d often got into tussles, and what could be more offensive to a son than to call his old mother a witch?
Without a word he lifted his fist and extended his index finger. He pointed it at Rachid while his lips curled with disgust.
When he stepped out onto the street he couldn’t find Krim. He called his name several times, to no avail, and waited on a bench to calm down before calling Rabia.
Krim had escaped to the heights of the Beaubrun neighbourhood. He was walking on the rue de l’Ecole des Beaux-arts when he came across a couple of students. The guy had the big head of a Frenchman with gentle and easy-going features. His laughing eyes met Krim’s, who turned towards him.
‘What are you laughing at? Got a problem?’
The student’s dreadlocks flowed from his borsalino. He looked to the sky, as if this kind of misunderstanding happened to him all the time. His girlfriend, whose arms were around his waist, encouraged him to continue walking but Krim didn’t want to let it go. He followed them for a few metres until he caught up with them. His fist was already clenched, ready to land on the student’s pale face.
‘I’m talking to you, arsehole. I’m talking to you.’
‘Come on, chill out, everything’s fine.’
The student didn’t dare look in Krim’s direction. His cheekbones were on fire and his back was shaking.
His girlfriend was more courageous. Her cheeks were covered in freckles; orange tights moulded her muscular calves. She had the stubborn look of a girl who’d grown up among boys. ‘Hey, leave us alone!’
‘I’m not talking to you.’
‘Get lost—’
Krim didn’t hesitate: he punched the rim of the student’s hat.
The guy in turn immediately bent down to pick it up.
‘Ugh,’ muttered the girl. ‘Pathetic. Come on, Jeremy, let’s get out of here.’
Krim watched them walk away: the girl’s hand moved from her boyfriend’s waist to his back. She soon began to rub it to comfort him.
A few metres further along, the road reached a fork lined with pine trees. Krim heard someone calling him from the square.
‘Leon! Leon!’
It was his nickname in the gang. Why Leon, he’d never properly understood: because he was silent, bizarrely intense, because he was often called a Frenchman, owing to his inability to correctly pronounce Arab sounds – the kh, the ha, the a of Ali – because he possessed something indefinable that distinguished him from Djamel and Fat Momo. They circled around him like vultures and made fun of his suit, pinching its sleeves.
‘Wesh, the old man. Leon! James Bond! You’d think it was James Bond!’
‘Come on, give me a break!’
Krim had no desire to hang around with them, and he risked getting into trouble if he lingered too long before heading back to Granny’s.
Djamel stuffed his chin into his tracksuit collar. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and jabbed his face in Krim’s direction. ‘Who’s getting married?’ His shaved head was pointy – rigid, even. Like all brutes who wear glasses he felt obliged to make his voice sound harsher.
‘My cousin.’
‘The fag?’
&n
bsp; ‘Hey, wallah, shut your mouth. Say that again and I swear on your mother’s life I’ll beat the shit out of you.’
‘Calm down – what did I say? Isn’t it true he’s a fag? And I’m not the one who says it,’ Djamel persisted. ‘It’s—’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Krim shouted, giving him a shove. ‘I’ll bust your head in. I swear, I’ll bust your head in.’
Fat Momo slipped between them to prevent a fight, but Djamel clearly wanted to have a go. ‘Come on, you’re a fag too, your entire family is a bunch of fags, what do you think, that he’ll get married and he’ll no longer be a faggot? You think faggots are, what, part-time cock-suckers?’
Krim got away from Fat Momo and jumped on Djamel. Fat Momo grabbed him from behind and all but lifted him from the ground. The intercessor’s bear-like frame made him well behaved and respectable, in any case more than that jerk Djamel, who was miming fellatio as he regained his breath.
Krim walked away to collect his thoughts and ask a small favour from Fat Momo.
‘Hey man, you wouldn’t have something on you?’
By speaking in codes and euphemisms so much when he was on the phone, Krim had ended up never pronouncing the word ‘dope’ at all.
‘Honestly, it’s not even for me,’ he insisted. ‘I swear on my mother’s grave it’s for my cousin, remember Raouf?’
‘Yeah yeah, but there’s nothing around. Maybe later. What are you doing tonight?’
‘What do you think? You think I’m dressed like this to go to Mass?’
‘All right, how ’bout this: call me around seven or eight and I’ll let you know. You got any minutes left on your phone? If not I’ll call you, it’s better that way. Hey, go on,’ he added, giving Krim a friendly rugby player’s tap on the belly, ‘have a good wedding and bsartek.’
‘Wesh.’
‘And wait, about the mac, you want to go training today?’
‘Obviously I can’t, why are you even asking?’
Savages- The Wedding Page 6