‘You know Ait Menguellet?’
Krim blushed with pleasure. His lips smiled all by themselves and his efforts to control them only betrayed his vanity. Fouad, who had understood everything, affectionately rubbed his head. Krim felt he was turning into a child again.
Dounia rummaged in the glove compartment while Rabia sought her son’s face in the rear-view mirror, in vain.
‘What does this song mean?’
Ait Menguellet was singing a cappella or almost (a mandolin played a few notes of accompaniment in arpeggio). The piece was called ‘Nnekini s warrac n lzayer’.
Aunt Dounia strained her ears, stretching her chin towards the car radio. ‘Show us the CD. Uh, the title’s ‘We, the Children of Algeria’, but … Rab, do you understand this? I just get a few words.’
‘But it’s in Kabyle, no?’ Krim asked in astonishment.
‘But not ours. In Bejaia, we speak the Kabyle of Little Kabylia. That’s Kabyle from Big Kabylia, my dear, you’ll have to ask the aunts.’
‘Auntie Zoulikha?’
‘Yes, or one of the uncles.’
‘Uncle Ferhat?’
Dounia nodded and started to tap on the steering wheel and move her head when the mandolin began a riff. It was soon joined by darbukas. They’d had to wait two and a half minutes for the song to really start but Krim already felt like crying at the beauty of that language, his language, which pronounced th like the English did and persisted in making everything gentle, uniform, egalitarian and dignified, like a poor neighbourhood ennobled by snow and sun.
‘Ah,’ Dounia suddenly exclaimed, ‘I understand what he means! Zarma, we, the children of Algeria, we’re the champions of the world, but in suffering, we’re the kings of misery, we’re like galley slaves, you understand?’
Krim regretted having asked the meaning of the words.
‘That said,’ Dounia added, ‘if we’re going to be losers, we should at least be the kings of the losers. Wallah.’
‘Auntie, has someone cut off your tongue?’ Fouad suddenly asked, concerned. ‘It’s the first time you’ve been silent for more than a minute!’
‘I’m a bit knackered,’ Rabia lied.
She turned to her nephew and made him get up in the car to kiss his forehead.
Krim had lowered his head so as not to meet his mother’s eyes. He noticed that Fouad’s loafers were shining and remembered that he had promised him a private conversation. A terrible thought suddenly weighed on him: what if Fouad was one of those people who made all kinds of promises but ended up never doing anything? Maybe he just pretended to love them all; after all, it was his job to play roles.
He discreetly diverted his gaze towards his big cousin, who was wearing a sort of cool half-smile as the car, which had just climbed a steep slope, descended almost immediately towards Montreynaud. The ease of the descent was comparable to that of a plane before landing. The night smelled of the warm leather interior, from which Krim and his older cousin looked out at the same thing, the city lights spread out below, red, yellow, plural and infinite.
Suddenly Fouad’s face came to life, and it was like a revelation: he was thinking the same thing as Krim; it was obvious that he, too, loved this urban night and its promises as happy as happiness itself.
It wasn’t possible to fake such happiness.
The exultant Krim couldn’t help tapping his cousin affectionately on the knee. To which Fouad immediately replied with smiling eyes, his priceless smiling eyes that narrowed his eyelids, created tiny, kind wrinkles at the corners of his temples. They gave the impression of being in the close company of a prince, and of Fouad being one of the better people in this world – one of the kings, the knights, the bards and the prophets.
Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, 8 p.m.
‘Do we get out?’ Farid asked angrily as he looked at his mobile’s screen.
Mouloud Benbaraka lifted his hand and gave his henchman a withering look.
‘Mezel, mezel. The longer he waits the better.’
He poured out in three uneven shares what was left of the bottle of Ballantine’s, which Fares had been sent to fetch from the boot of the BMW. He then offered the twins cigarettes, but Farid had just quit and Fares preferred sport and good food to the decadent delights of nicotine.
‘Look at me,’ Benbaraka ordered, after an intimidating gulp of whisky. ‘Tell me what he’s asked you to do.’
‘Who?’
‘Who do you think? The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.’
Fares was dumbfounded. Nazir must have told him twenty times over the past two days that the mission he’d been given wasn’t to be confided to anyone, not even his own brother. And it had taken Benbaraka’s one moment of intuition, followed by a hardly insistent look, for all his resolution to waver.
He suddenly had an idea. ‘No but, it’s got nothing to do with the business.’
Farid frowned.
‘Well then, answer the fucking question!’
‘No but, well, it’s nothing, he asked me to go and get a car and I have to take it to Paris.’
Benbaraka crossed and uncrossed his legs beneath the transparent table.
‘And he’s paying you for that? How much?’
Fares seemed lost in his thoughts. Benbaraka snapped his fingers several times under his nose. But it was an umpteenth scream from their prisoner that drew him from the strange melancholy the boss’s question had plunged him into. An honest reply to that question was even more dispiriting: he didn’t know how much Nazir was going to pay him, since there hadn’t, in truth, ever been question of payment.
On the floor below, Zoran continued to toy with the idea of escape. Despite all his efforts, he hadn’t been able to pick the lamp back up. He’d climbed onto the desk and bent his knees in an untenable position so as not to bang his head against the ceiling. The river rat moved about constantly in the dark. Zoran had got used to it, slightly, but not enough to let him make out what was essential: the distance between door and beast.
The river rat suddenly struck one of the legs of the folding bed. Zoran concluded that it was at the other end of the room. He climbed down from the desk and felt a key under his foot. After picking it up he pushed the door as silently as possible and froze, imagining that his jailers awaited him in the staircase and were about to jump on him.
But there was no one in the staircase: the boss’s metallic voice asked questions; one of the twins replied. There was no sign of the other one.
Zoran tiptoed to the room at the back, the one that the twins had been unable to open. He slid the key in the lock and was relieved that the discussion was continuing uninterrupted upstairs.
His hands were trembling like they’d never trembled before when he opened the window overlooking a piece of unkempt lawn. He stepped over the windowsill and felt the cool evening wind on his face, puffy with tears. Instead of running across the lawn, he climbed the low wall separating this property from the one next door and found himself in another garden.
Less than a minute later he was at the riverside, a few metres from the road. Two cars passed, and Zoran burst into tears at the memory of the river rat. A discharge of shivers paralysed him there. It was as if the odour of the beast and its monstrous presence had deposited a nightmarish dust on his skin, which he would never be able to brush off.
The planks of wood that formed the pavement had rotted since the winter thaw, exuding a smell that Zoran associated with the violence of things, the hardness of life, of nature herself, in so much as she was merciless and did not care about us; a baby abandoned in a basket stood a greater chance of perishing against the rocks, drowned in the icy water and devoured by water rats, than of being found by a she-wolf with bronze eyes who would raise it like her own.
Instead of regaining the road and searching for help, he crouched down to pass under the bridge and continue along the Furan, which he’d decided obstinately to follow, far from men and streetlights, to thwart the predictions his pursuers would not fail to make
. At the first turn in the river, the bank became a negotiable path lined with pine trees, which zigzagged for two hundred metres before disappearing near a small hill covered in brush. Zoran climbed it while taking care to remain hidden, and it was then that he saw in the distance the infamous Tower of Montreynaud, topped as he remembered by that colossal bowl dripping with the bloody sunset.
6
The Party
Community Centre, 8.30 p.m.
When they entered the hall, the Nerrouche family was greeted like all the guests by the unavoidable mother of the bride. She led them over to the three tables that had been reserved for them, but there was a problem: these three tables were right at the back, away from the stage. Granny took the initiative and addressed the mistress of ceremonies in Arabic, in her language and without an accent.
‘Why are you putting us here, away from everyone? We’re the family of the groom, why are you treating us like stray dogs?’
The bride’s mother shook her jewellery while pointing to the tables near the stage. They were occupied by a group of young men in suits; since the music was too loud over there, the decision had been taken to place the important families as far as possible from the speakers. Granny didn’t buy this and wanted to discuss the matter further, but was cut short by the open palm of the bride’s mother, who was speaking into the mouthpiece of her hands-free phone. She excused herself with an obvious hypocritical smile and ran off to welcome some new guests.
When the whole family was settled at three rectangular tables joined together, Toufik noticed they would have to serve themselves if they wanted to drink or eat anything. He signalled to Raouf and Kamelia, and the three cousins made for the buffet where a spread of sweets, non-alcoholic drinks and Maghrebian pastries were laid out on silver trays.
The main hall had a dome-shaped roof, amplifying a sound system that was already too loud for Uncle Ferhat, who plugged his ears discreetly as soon as he wasn’t spoken to. The neon lights illuminating the still-sparse dance floor were enhanced with projectors of all sorts of colours. A glitter ball hung above the stage, which housed four enormous speakers and a complex mixing board managed by the DJ Raouf had spoken to earlier in the afternoon. There was also a mic stand, which stood unused until the bride’s mother climbed onto the platform to ask the DJ to turn the sound down.
‘Please, please!’
The hall was completely full, now that the Nerrouche tribe had taken its place at the back. Toufik nudged Raouf and nodded towards Kamelia, who was being chatted up by a pretty boy with a gold necklace.
‘Oh, wait, I have to go,’ the boy suddenly said.
Kamelia replied by flapping the fingers of her left hand with a studied, effective nonchalance.
‘Who’s that?’ asked a worried Toufik.
‘None of your business.’ Then, realizing she’d offended him: ‘The bride’s brother, Yacine. Not bad, eh?’
A few moments later the lights went out. It was already difficult for Dounia and Rabia to squeeze through to see the procession pass, and they didn’t even try to make room for their alarmed sisters. A few people stood on their chairs, while others didn’t hesitate to jostle and crush toes to get through the crowd.
The double throne was held up by eight men, including Yacine, who winked at Kamelia when he passed her. Kamelia was taken aback, not by Yacine’s courtly audacity, but by the vision of this throne carried at shoulder height like a coffin.
The bride and groom made their entrance from the room where the bride would have to change dresses half a dozen times over the course of the evening. Slim forced a smile worthy of the Queen of England, which he could manage only on the bottom half of his face, the other half simply paralysed by fear. The bride, though more relaxed, was not quite at ease either. Her Algerian dress was embroidered with so many colours, not a single one could be identified.
Behind them the bride’s mother could be heard having a go at the DJ for taking too long to start the music. When the sound finally made the walls and Uncle Ferhat’s temples shake, the tsarina of the reception directed the procession personally, receiving the outstretched hands in congratulations and the ululations as if they were addressed only to her.
Suddenly she looked up towards Slim and was aghast: the groom wasn’t dancing! She almost climbed onto Yacine’s head to attract Slim’s attention, and screamed into his ear when he had finally bent in half to hear her.
‘You have to dance! Dance, Slim! Move! Move your head, your hands! Come on, come on!’ She mimed disjointed undulations that made all the hardware around her wrists tinkle.
Slim made an effort but the result was pathetic: eyes half-closed and face screwed up, turning his head from right to left with his little clenched fists raised up, he looked like a guy setting foot in a nightclub for the first time – or more precisely, given the trajectory of his swinging shoulders, he looked like a girl setting foot in a nightclub for the first time, burdened with the obligation to act hot. He must have finally realized this, for he suddenly stopped wiggling his hips in order to adopt a more manly movement, which was, it seemed, universally considered to pass for dancing: hands lifted as if for prayer, then brought back down, again and again in time.
It was soon decided that the procession had lasted long enough. The DJ, observing everything on tiptoe, segued into a softer segment, a recent R&B track that managed to engage everyone. The operation that followed had been rehearsed the day before, but it wasn’t any less perilous: it involved separating the two thrones in the air and parodying a temporary breakup. Maybe its purpose was to conjure such a thing away, or perhaps it was just done to take advantage of the mechanical peculiarity of this detachable double throne.
The bride was brought in again, this time by four men hoisting her atop a sort of Arabian Nights altar, which her throne had no problem fitting onto. The groom joined her, to the cheers of the crowd. Their two thrones were then arranged to offer a clear route to the dance floor. Behind a screen pierced with gilded mashrabiyas, a direct passageway would allow the bride to retreat to the changing room without difficulty.
A gong was struck and the DJ turned down the sound. A dozen men in waiter’s uniforms stood in the small passageway cleared for them in front of the stage. They carried silver platters with lids they lifted in tandem.
Had they been ordered to adopt such a dramatic appearance? With their shiny shoes, their narrow black ties and their inscrutable faces they looked like Dracula’s lieutenants, impatient to show off their massive fangs. Instead they waited, slightly unsure of themselves, for the hundred guests to disperse so that they could serve the hors d’oeuvres.
Krim had shadowed Fouad throughout the procession – had even gone as far as applauding and whistling when Slim joined his beloved. When they returned to the family’s tables, he jockeyed for a seat between Fouad and Kamelia. Luna noticed this and made fun of him by staring with one eyebrow arched higher than the other.
‘As they say, they’ve gone to town on the meal!’ Rabia exclaimed, calling Zoulikha as a witness. ‘You okay, Zouzou?’
Rabia tried to smile, but the uneasiness was perceptible all around the table. The other guests laughed and applauded the waiters, who were obliged to start smiling, in between their complaints that the music was too loud. The windows beside them were draped in thick sheets, alternately yellow and apple green.
Krim went to the toilets, bumping against a woman in a sari. There was already a line and Krim found Raouf again, three guys ahead, screaming into his mobile while nervously slapping his belly with his free hand. Determined to avoid another interrogation from his arrogant chin, Krim hid behind the dandruffed shoulder of the man in front of him. But Raouf noticed him and relinquished his spot to come over.
‘So you’re avoiding me? In fact, just forget it, I’ve found some, seems there’s a guy coming tonight who’s got what I’m looking for.’
‘MDMA?’
‘Yeah, hush-hush, though. Thanks all the same.’
Watch
ing Raouf elbow his way back into his place in line, Krim caught a glimpse of his sister. ‘What the hell are you up to now? Aren’t you sick of acting weird?’
Luna was deliberately looking around, moving her head to the beat, as if he were no more important to her than anyone else.
Krim seized her bare muscular arm. ‘Come on, I’ve got something to ask you. No, hold on, it’s serious. It’s about Mum – tell me what you know.’
Luna tried unsuccessfully to tear herself from her big brother.
‘It’s Belkacem, isn’t it?’
Belkacem was their upstairs neighbour. He had generously repainted their flat the month before.
‘Uh, well, Belkacem what?’
‘Mum’s seeing him, is that right?’
Luna dropped her shoulders a notch and stuck her tongue out. ‘Aren’t you getting tired of all of this? Can’t you let her live her life?’
Krim eyed her with disgust and let her leave. Clenching his fists, he suddenly noticed a small group of children kneeling behind the screen at the foot of the stage. A little girl in a pink blouse was leading the dance and distributing crayons to her pupils for the evening. When she took her turn to draw, four dimples appeared on her small studious fist and Krim felt like bursting into tears again. He rejoined the line and caught the first tingling of migraine: a crowd of shiny stains and spots that moved from left to right and right to left. Just one badly placed thought was enough to awaken the thing: it was like a panther sleeping in his brain, huddling, curled up tight in its minuscule living space beside a white-hot fire, the fire of a headache, which fed on each excessive decibel.
With the aura came several visions that dragged him away, for the tiny period they lasted, from the infernal agitation reigning in the hall. There was a memory of his summer holidays down south, of Aurélie’s skin, the gentle cleavage of her young breasts sprinkled with freckles on which an indigo dolphin-shaped pendant danced. And then finally he saw, with those same mysterious eyes of the mind, the silhouette of his shrivelled mother on her bed at the end of a restless night, a band of light running along the ceiling like a steady flow of blood, and Krim was convinced that this was the end and that he had to bid her farewell.
Savages- The Wedding Page 12