‘Quickly, yes,’ the journalist interrupted in a curt but smiling voice.
‘Yes, the resignation of his security chief, who’d had enough of seeing his team constantly pulled back, well, this move hasn’t really been discussed in the press but I’d like to emphasize how important this is, a real first in the Fifth Republic. It really is … And then of course we all remember the minaret affair in Saint-Etienne at the start of the year, the message from AQIM even refers to it specifically …’
Krim was moved upon hearing his city’s name on a national news programme – just like when he was very little, and his mother rounded up everyone in front of the TV whenever images of Saint-Etienne appeared. She always made a terrific fuss over the two minutes of local switch-overs on the evening news – two minutes devoted exclusively to Saint-Etienne, and viewable only by the people of Saint-Etienne, that bestowed on the main street, the town hall or the place Marengo a sort of dignity, a magical and exciting sanction given to banal, everyday things by their appearance, however fleeting, on that mysterious screen.
A scene he couldn’t quite date suddenly came back to him: he and Slim in the tram, and some guys who, like Djamel just a few hours ago, were insinuating that Slim was a faggot. Krim wanted to text Djamel to remind him that faggots married each other and not women.
Instead he texted Nazir, as he’d been encouraged to do if he was ever wondering about anything at all. He wrote that people were talking, saying things about Slim. He expected Nazir to reply immediately but he didn’t. On checking that his message had been sent he almost tripped over his young cousin, who studied him melancholically while sucking his thumb. Krim kneeled down and showed him his shiny mobile and his beautiful silver lighter, which seemed to spark the little one’s interest.
‘You want to light it?’
The boy nodded without really understanding, took the lighter in his pudgy fingers and figured out how to open the metal top. But on pressing the button he received a shock and started screaming. It was a dodgy lighter that Krim had stolen after discovering its unique property of emitting a tiny electric shock when you pressed it from the wrong side, which looked like the right one.
The boy’s mother, Rachida, came running over. ‘What on earth is wrong with you? Go get your head checked, you lunatic!’
In the other room an uncle plugged his ears while his wife came to calm things down. Understanding the situation in the blink of an eye, she took Krim’s side and addressed Rachida in a calm and composed voice: ‘Rachida raichek, so you’re going to start the hundred year war over a lighter, eh? He wanted to play with the little boy, that’s all. You’ve got to let him play—’
‘Yeah?’ Rachida said indignantly. ‘Why don’t you tell me how to raise my kids, while you’re at it!’
In need of a cigarette, Krim rushed out to the balcony, where Dounia suddenly stopped talking. Her three sons’ big black eyes came from her husband, who had died three years earlier; her own were fine, kind, green-brown, and a little sad. Dounia had the most Kabyle face of the family: a strong nose, white skin and clear eyes. She seemed to have aged prematurely from looking after old people in a home in the city centre; her brown hair, tied up in a bun, already had quite a few white strands in it and her skin, ruined by smoke and nicotine, had the greyish pallor of the sixty-year-old she wouldn’t be for another ten years.
Rabia encouraged Krim to close the balcony window and pointed out the little corner where he could smoke without being seen by the uncles.
‘Go on, Doune, you can talk, Krim won’t tell, he’s as silent as the grave.’
‘You sure?’
‘Of course, he won’t say a word, trust me.’
Dounia took her young nephew’s smooth chin in her hand and shook it affectionately.
‘Okay, well, I was saying, he spoke to me about it last week.’
‘What’s going on?’ ventured Krim.
‘You sure?’ asked Dounia.
‘Yes, yes,’ Rabia replied.
‘Well, there were rumours that Fouad might be going out with someone very … how should I put it … high up.’
‘Who?’
‘Jasmine Chaouch.’
Krim nearly fell over.
‘Chaouch’s daughter? The one we saw on TV just now?’
‘Come on, Krim, you mustn’t repeat it, hey, swear on your mother’s head.’
‘Yes, yes, I swear. Wow.’
Rabia’s eyes had never sparkled so much. ‘But if you think about it, it makes sense. I’ve always said Fouad is the best-looking one in the family, isn’t that true, Krim? Plus he’s an actor, women like actors, it’s well known, they fall like ninepins! Look, the doctor in ER, what’s his name?’
‘Doug Ross.’
‘Doug Ross, exactly! He does ads for coffee now, my dear.’
Dounia turned to Krim and asked for a puff on his cigarette. ‘But you shouldn’t tell anyone, love, you understand, that’ll just make people jealous, people will talk. It’s different with your mother, we tell each other everything, but don’t repeat this, right? I trust you.’
‘Krim, put it out, put it out, Uncle’s coming.’
Krim began by hiding his cigarette in the palm of his hand, but threw it out the window when he saw that the uncle in question was Ferhat. The old man appeared lost, and his Russian hat made his face look even more wizened than usual. They made a little room for him while he explained in Kabyle, ‘I need a bit of fresh air.’
So as to resume conversation as naturally as possible, Rabia asked him to take off his hat. ‘Uncle, it’s too hot to wear a hat! Miskine …’
‘No, no,’ the uncle murmured, getting his breath back.
‘But yes, yes, it’s obvious you’re suffocating,’ Rabia insisted. And then Ferhat used all the diminished strength he had left to stand up to the gale of words from Rabia. ‘Leave the hat alone, leave it, my son.’
He lost his balance and had to sit down immediately. Rabia looked up knowingly at Dounia, who noticed the moist lines at the corners of the old man’s eyes. He left the confined space of the balcony and dragged himself to the living room, where his place had since been taken. Rabia wanted to go in again and ask Toufik to give up his seat for his Elder, but Dounia held her back with a reassuring blink of her eyes: Toufik would think of it himself.
‘Hey, give me another smoke, darling,’ she asked her nephew. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me today, I keep spitting!’
Krim lit another cigarette and skilfully handed it to his aunt. Rabia, delighted by his politeness and perhaps also by the grace in his gesture, leaned in to kiss her son’s head. But he drew back abruptly and refused to look at her. Rabia had the sudden impression that he knew.
‘We’d better stop there, Rab,’ Dounia declared, having drawn a puff so powerful that the filter, reddened by her lipstick, had completely lost its shape. ‘This has to stop, we smoke too much. Rabia?’
Rabia, who wasn’t listening to her, brushed at her sister’s jacket, moistened her fingers and rubbed at a stain on her shoulder pad.
‘To think,’ Dounia added with a disabused smile, ‘that we have to hide on the balcony to smoke, at our age …’
Rabia excused herself with a wave of her hand and ran to the bathroom to rid herself of a doubt. Her face fell as she went through the list of her recently sent messages and discovered, instead of Omar at the top of the list, the first name of her beloved son framed by exclamation marks.
5
Man of the Game
Saint-Victor Boating Centre, 7.30 p.m.
The photographer climbed up the grassy slope to avoid having to round the bend thirty metres ahead. His suit trousers were stained green, but it didn’t matter: his instincts hadn’t betrayed him and the viewpoint from which they now stood was ten times better than from the restaurant terrace, where two cherry trees blocked the marina from view. He’d had no difficulty convincing the mother of the bride, even if it took a few dubious conjectures such as the quality of n
atural lighting, the fog and the difference in altitude.
‘Okay, well then, we just have to wait for them to arrive.’
Kenza, the bride, had been separated from Slim for less than an hour, and already she felt she’d fallen back under her mother’s influence. Plus, she was beginning to feel a bit cold. The gusts of wind wrinkled the surface of the lake and made the tree blossoms flutter. Clutching her elbows to stifle a shiver, she looked in the direction that the photographer was pointing to. The marina was made up of about fifteen mostly deserted pontoons, lazily watched over by a tower with blue-tinted windows, splashed with the last rays of sunlight.
Kenza looked up and noticed they’d indeed better hurry: the apricot sunset would soon disappear behind the cliffs. On the lawn at her feet, the shadows were already lengthening and she really had to squint to identify a silhouette.
‘They’re coming,’ Kenza’s mother muttered, looking down towards the car park.
The bride was surprised that there were only three of them (Slim, his actor-brother Fouad and their mother) and disappointed that they gave no explanation.
Still, the photo session proceeded successfully. They had to restrain the artistic ambitions of the photographer, diverting each daft idea spouting out of his mouth every two minutes. The bride’s mother supported one of them, which required the married couple to stretch out alongside a flowerbed, symmetrical to one another, head placed on an elbow and a red rose between their teeth.
‘Yeah, we don’t actually have to keep that one,’ Dounia assured them.
The bride’s mother heard this and shot her a withering look. After half an hour, the photographer had run out of ideas and there was almost no sunlight left. Slim and Kenza went off on their own as the photographer put away his equipment. The lake below them was not exactly a lake, but rather a particularly wide stretch of the Loire where the residents of Saint-Etienne pretended to be at the beach.
Slim remembered the outdoor barbecues they’d organized when he was in senior school, and he also remembered the day Uncle Bouzid swam out too far and got caught in a whirlpool. They had to send for a rescue team, and the shirtless bloke who drove the motorboat was very brave.
‘What’re you thinking, sweetheart?’
Slim took his young bride in his spindly arms and squeezed her with all his strength, until he could feel nothing but the compressed flesh of her breasts. He kissed her passionately as he made a vow, more than a vow, a genuine prayer whose every word seemed to burn the entrails of his brain.
Fouad joined him a few minutes later.
‘So, happy with the photo session?’
Slim seemed unusually agitated. Fouad took him by the arm and the two brothers walked along the lookout.
‘What’s up with Krim?’ asked Fouad. ‘Last week Aunt Rabia calls and tells me he socked his boss at McDonald’s, that he’s going to lose his unemployment benefits, that he spends his time doing weird things in the cellar …’
‘Don’t know, I don’t actually see much of him any more.’
‘I’m going to see him in a bit, to try and talk to him.’
‘Yes,’ Slim said, taking a breath. Then he shifted to what was genuinely bothering him. ‘Fouad, I haven’t told you everything about Kenza.’
‘What? I’m all ears.’
‘I don’t know how to explain it, I think …’
‘Take your time.’
Fouad had stopped and was staring hard at his brother in order to guess, before he announced it, what he figured would be a very unpleasant coup de théâtre.
‘Well, I mean …’ Slim drew another deep breath. ‘I’m going to ask you a question, and forget it’s got anything to do with me, just tell me, okay?’
‘Come on, Slim, just tell me what’s going on.’
‘Is it possible for a girl to stay with a boy even if … even if they don’t do it?’
‘You mean you’ve never slept together?’
‘Come on – not so loud.’
‘But is that it? Never?’
‘I can’t do it yet, Fouad, I can’t do it. I’m with her, it starts out okay, and then I just get these images in my head, I start thinking of something else. It’s horrible, it’s a total nightmare, but I can’t fight it.’
‘You’re thinking of something else or someone else?’
Fouad could sense that his little brother was on the verge of tears. He took Slim by the shoulders and plunged his dark eyes into his.
‘Yes, but …’
‘What did she say to you?’ Fouad asked.
‘Well, she laughed, she said it wasn’t a big deal … that we needed to take the time to get to know each other better.’
Fouad grimaced, not because of his little brother’s depressing naivety, but because he was speaking in a thick Saint-Etienne accent, the one he’d shed a long time ago.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Slim asked.
Fouad’s face darkened and Slim knew he was thinking about Nazir. It was a thought he couldn’t hide: it opened up his mouth and hardened his handsome jaw spectacularly.
‘I knew it,’ Slim said, losing his temper and looking down at the ground. ‘You think just like Nazir, you’re thinking: that little faggot would do better getting fucked up the arse than trying to fool everyone by getting married.’
‘Stop talking rubbish and look at things as they are. It’s your choice, Slim. It’s your life. Do you love Kenza?’
‘Of course, she’s the woman of my life.’
‘Well, that’s all that matters,’ Fouad concluded, feeling like a liar. ‘There’s nothing else to say. If she loves you back, and I can see that she does, and I’m sure she’s a nice girl, then you have to talk to each other – in a relationship you tell each other everything. And then …’
‘What?’ Slim begged, as if his big brother was going to solve the biggest problem in his life with a magic formula.
‘No, I mean, in the past, couples used to wait to get married before … consummating. Maybe it wasn’t that bad, when you think about it …’
Fouad turned towards the marina and saw the last ray of sunlight die against the club’s blue Plexiglas. He had not felt so powerless in years, probably not since their father’s death. When he returned to his little brother’s scrawny silhouette, it seemed that the poor boy had no weight in the universe, that he’d been swept away and scattered to the winds. He felt like slapping Slim’s face, hardening him, giving him some weight with which to confront the violence of life. Instead he took him in his arms and stroked the back of his head with as much care as he would take with the soft skull of a newborn babe.
At Granny’s, 8 p.m.
Krim no longer wanted to leave the balcony. It was starting to get dark, and the windows were turning into mirrors. A vast swathe of clouds where the sun had disappeared merged on the horizon with packs of monotone hills. Behind the library, the slag heaps lurked, sullen and immoveable.
He leaned back against the balcony railing and looked inside at the people who were standing up to greet Fouad and the groom. Lights had been switched on, and only Aunt Zoulikha remained seated, doting on one of the young cousins and approving each of his rolls of fat. Aunt Zoulikha – she confused weight with health and knew only one proverb in French, which she always pronounced incorrectly, with a toothy smile that unmasked the wholesome, shy, charmless young girl she’d been in the middle of the previous century, whom no one had ever wanted.
Fat Momo called his name down the line for the fifth consecutive time.
Krim considered a swearword, maybe muttered it, but then gave up. ‘Hey, why do you keep calling me?’
‘Come on, calm down, you don’t want to go practise in the woods?’
‘Where’s the nine?’
‘Uh, in the cellar, where you think?’
Krim wanted to light a second cigarette but Fouad noticed this and came towards him. It was true he was handsome, and on seeing him, Krim could only think of presidential candidate Chaouch: tall, vig
orous without being bulky, with an engaging smile and pleasantly curly hair. A champion.
‘Piss off,’ Krim spat into his mobile, placing it perpendicular to his chin. ‘I have other shit to do.’
‘Come on, there’s nothing going on over here, I’ve fuck all to do.’
‘No, no, come on, stop, and you’ve got to get rid of it. Throw it in the Furan. Seriously, on my mother’s life throw it in the Furan.’
‘What?’
‘On the Koran, I don’t want to hear about it again, throw it in the Furan!’
Fouad had reached the balcony by then, and Krim hung up. ‘What are you smoking?’
Krim had to swallow twice before speaking. He didn’t like feeling so impressionable, and reassured himself by thinking that it was normal to be impressed by a cousin significantly older than him and who, above all, had been on TV every evening for the past year.
‘Camels.’
‘Can you slip me one?’
‘If you like.’
Fouad looked at Krim’s shoes. ‘Slim told me you were his witness in the end. Thanks. There was an accident on the tracks and the train was delayed two hours.’
‘Yeah, that’s fucking annoying. The train, I mean.’
‘We’re leaving for the community centre soon, but if you want we can chat for a bit later on. I just need to shine my shoes. Sound good?’
He had a clear, powerful voice, and yet Krim was almost moved by the warmth it exuded, which seemed to envelop only him. All the others inside were looking towards the balcony and Krim felt proud.
‘Yeah, why not?’
‘In fact,’ Fouad continued, ‘I need to talk to you about your mate, Mohammed.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘Oh, no, no, nothing, I’m just friends with him on Facebook. He friended me, you know. Honest, he cracks me up.’
‘Wesh, he’s too much, such a nutter, Fat Momo.’
Savages- The Wedding Page 10