Savages- The Wedding

by Sabri Louatah

  ‘You go near her again and I’ll kill you!’ Krim screamed again, throwing the lighter at Belkacem’s face. ‘Rabinouche. Pff, I’ll kill you! I’ll tear you to pieces!’

  Fouad tried to take his cousin by the shoulder, but Krim freed himself and ran towards the community centre, where he joined the crowd of partygoers.

  The music was so loud, Krim could feel it weighing on his shoulders. He could already see himself falling face down, vanquished by the Rai, his cheeks stuck to the tiled hall floor. He weaved his way between people, muttering firm, resolute excuse-me’s, the excuse-me’s of a man who knows where he’s going. This was, of course, far from the case, and he soon had to turn back: he was about to reach Mouloud Benbaraka’s prowling zone. If the boss saw him, he’d surely smash his face in, in front of his mother and the entire family. Some people might try to separate them, but no one would dare kick out the great and mighty Mouloud Benbaraka.

  In his efforts to avoid him, Krim ended up in a corner of the hall he’d thought was unreachable – at the edge of the narrow corridor leading to the room where the bride got changed and the cheques and presents were hidden. Seeing that no one was watching its entrance, Krim rushed into the room and closed the door behind him.

  He left the light off and used his mobile to find his way. The cash box containing the cheques wasn’t even shut. Krim took the envelopes one by one, until he finally found the one from Mouloud Benbaraka. Krim slipped the fifteen hundred-euro cheque into his boxer shorts and walked out, loaded with the desire to pick a fight. If he saw Belkacem again, he told himself over and over, puffing out his chest, he’d kill him on the spot. But he didn’t see Belkacem again.

  He went out into the car park and managed to escape Fouad, who was chatting with a small group once again. In this group Krim soon spotted his mother, and he jumped when he saw Mouloud Benbaraka approach her. Could he have already noticed that his cheque had been stolen? Krim wanted to go over there, but was frozen by fear.

  Benbaraka was speaking to Fouad and to his mother, smiling. He looked around him, as if he was looking for Krim, and murmured an amusing word into Rabia’s ear; she pushed him away in an exaggerated shove, like a scene from a bad sitcom. After which Benbaraka walked off, caressing the shoulders of each of the small group’s members, whose conversation he’d interrupted.

  Krim ran towards his lair. On crossing the car park he felt like breaking a wing mirror with a kick, but he was too afraid. He was about to return to the centre to speak to his mother, to warn her against that monster Mouloud Benbaraka, when he suddenly felt tears rising. He knelt down to control them and heard the violent screech of a car skidding off just above the stadium.

  Through the curtain of tears brimming at his eyelids, he heard two voices confronting one another at the foot of the goalposts, in the exact spot where he’d overheard Raouf’s phone conversation that very afternoon. He walked towards them, refusing to admit that he recognized the voice that had started a pathetic explanatory tirade. And yet at the edge of the stadium, with his loafers planted in synthetic turf already damp with dew, he had to acknowledge that it was indeed Slim talking to that awful gypsy dressed as a woman.

  ‘Slim, what’s going on? What the fuck are you doing with that guy?’

  ‘Leave it, Krim, leave it. Go back, I’m taking care of this.’

  Zoran addressed Krim with an inscrutable gesture and a phrase in Romanian, then put his arm round Slim’s shoulder.

  Slim shook himself from this embrace and turned to the goalpost, as if he was about to throw up.

  ‘Come on, Slim, tell me what’s going on. Who is this guy?’

  ‘He’s nobody, it’s nothing.’

  Zoran intervened. ‘He to give money me. He to give thousand euros.’ Detecting the twitch of Krim’s upper lip – he was now just a couple of metres away – he widened his stance.

  ‘Slim, why does he say you owe him money?’

  Slim could no longer speak. His throat could be heard twisting and resisting the appeal from his stomach. The nausea shook him relentlessly.

  ‘I had fuck with him,’ Zoran murmured, defiant.

  Disgusted, Krim turned to this interloper and took in the sight of him – the English flag on his t-shirt, sparkling under the cruel moon of the streetlight – and punched him in the chest.

  ‘I had fuck with Slim, I had fuck with him!’

  Zoran let himself be dragged towards the mini-clearing, where Krim’s glare immobilized him no doubt more effectively than his shaky headlock.

  ‘Who is he?’ Krim screamed. ‘Who sent you?’

  Zoran was too terrified to reply. Through a superhuman effort he managed to push Krim aside, though in truth he probably wasn’t that much weaker than his opponent.

  ‘Slim, Slim, I had fuck with Slim! Not marriage, not marriage, he faggot!’

  There were a few moments of clumsy wrestling in which Krim had to pull Zoran’s hair to release his jaws from his wrist. He looked at the wounds the dirty teeth had left on his skin. There were also traces of make-up, but it was the thought that this creature’s saliva had been in contact with his skin that drove him mad. He clenched his fists like Fat Momo had taught him to do in full-contact. And he brought them down one after the other, and more and more quickly, on the face of this thing of undefined sex. In the distance he saw Slim collapsed against the goalpost at the foot of the streetlight, shiny traces of vomit at the corner of his lips. Krim had never fought in these conditions. Usually he had to bring down the opponent, master him, throw some punches, kicks, put up a struggle. For the first time ever, he met with no resistance, none except for that one phrase repeated obstinately between tears:

  ‘I had fuck with Slim, I had fuck with Slim.’

  Krim inflicted blow after blow methodically, without ever thinking of switching technique, even though his bloodied fists were in more and more pain. The other guy had stopped crying for a few moments when Krim decided that he’d punished him enough.

  He grabbed his head by his shoulder-length hair and crushed it against the mounds of earth he’d lovingly gathered an hour before. He gave him one last kick in the ribs, a second last kick in the back, then ran and threw up in front of the changing room doors.

  One of the twins – Farid – appeared in the darkness across the stadium. On seeing him Slim dashed off towards the gym. Farid pursued him and noticed Zoran’s inanimate body in the bushes. He approached on tiptoe, as if afraid of waking a ghost. Anonymous reflections danced from one pool of blood to the other on that motionless head lying in the unkempt grass.

  Farid grumbled and continued on his way. Zoran regained consciousness a few seconds later. It took him more than a minute to remember what had happened. And in that aching yet serene interval, all the strange, dazed awakenings that had punctuated his life in exile passed by in single file: freezing hotel rooms, inhospitable floors, sofas too small, then the tents, the trailer berths, the back seats of smoke-filled cars, and the naked ground, the violent earth and especially the concrete, concrete worn down by decades of moisture that it was sick of absorbing. It warped around him, as clumsy and as brown as a pernicious living thing.

  Zoran smelled the grass and felt the pain in his face. He got back up and stumbled towards the stadium lights, and then far from them, and then farther from the other lights, as far from them as possible.

  Farid thought he heard something beside him move but then noticed a stooped silhouette a little way beyond the gym: a young bloke throwing up into a green rubbish bin. After about ten seconds Krim tore his head from the waste bin and shot Farid a long stare that was wild, yellow and chilling.

  Farid rushed back to his car. He tore out of the car park, failing to prevent his tyres from screeching: a few guests smoking at the entrance to the community centre turned around and insulted him, and some man even threw a drinks can in his direction. Two streets down, a police car went off in his pursuit. He had nothing to fear, his papers were in order. Zoran might not be dead and if hi
s fingerprints were on the body, that meant nothing, because the forensic police would never be called in for a dead Romanian tranny. But the panic, the fatigue, the stress scrambled his ideas as much as his vision. The street was one-way and Farid had about five hundred metres to make up his mind. He wearily punched the steering wheel and accelerated. The police car caught up with him five minutes later, soon joined by two others. Farid had just enough time to send Fares a text that included the words ‘police’, ‘all on my own now’, ‘leave quickly’ and ‘don’t call me’. He switched off his mobile, hid it under his seat and got out with his hands up. Half a dozen police fell upon him.

  It was four in the morning and the reception was in full swing. The DJ now only played hip-hop and electro: it was the young people’s turn to dance and he had transformed the ballroom into a real nightclub. Standing in front of the buffet, Bouzid told Kamelia how Rachid the butcher had humiliated him earlier in the afternoon.

  ‘But I’ve always told Granny, it’s not right to read the cards, it’s haram, but she just doesn’t care. And now look, afterwards, who pays for it? Us, we’ve got a bad reputation in all of Saint-Etienne, l’archoum!’

  Kamelia had a hard time containing the rhythmic pulse in her hips. Two overzealous men danced right into them. Bouzid took it upon himself not to make a fuss, but Kamelia could tell that one nudge would be enough for his bald pressure-cooker forehead to explode.

  They both spied old Uncle Ferhat passing behind the buffet, almost hugging the wall trying to get to the toilets. Kamelia wanted to help him, but to do so would require going around the tables and Bouzid would no doubt have taken offence if she’d suddenly stopped listening to him. She watched the sickly, stooped old man make his way with difficulty between the ragged dancers who almost all, by now, had the half-closed eyes of sleepwalkers.

  What she didn’t see was that, instead of going to the toilets, Ferhat passed behind the stage, right next to the deafening amplifiers, and stood in front of the DJ waiting to be noticed. The toothy DJ turned towards this surreal apparition and asked what he wanted with a nod. Ferhat took a cassette tape from his jacket pocket and presented it to the young man.

  ‘What… But I can’t play cassettes, sir!’

  Old Ferhat seemed not to understand. He bowed a little and shook the tape. He looked as innocent as a little boy, and the DJ couldn’t refuse him.

  ‘What track do you want?’

  ‘Ruh ruh, go on, play the cassette.’

  ‘Yes, yes I’ll put it on, but which track?’ He tried to say it in Arabic (ashral?) but Ferhat replied in Kabyle:

  ‘Nnekini s warrac n lzayer.’

  ‘I don’t understand Kabyle, I don’t understand.’

  ‘Four, number four.’

  While Ferhat hobbled away, the DJ rifled through the CDs he’d been given to see if there was something by Ait Menguellet. He decided to do a good deed for the poor old man and looked online.

  Krim had gone to clean himself up at the fountain on the other side of the stadium. He walked in front of the cars asleep in the car park and caught sight of another wing mirror asking for a kick. But his legs hurt and it worried him to hear his heart pounding in all the veins of his head. An Algerian flag was attached to the mirror he’d wanted to vandalize: it was the car of an old uncle who was actually sleeping in the front passenger seat. He had put the seat back as far as possible, but his head moved uncomfortably.

  Krim entered the hall again to the sound of partygoers complaining because of a too-lengthy interruption in the music. Suddenly the first mandolin notes of ‘We, the Children of Algeria’ echoed in the hall. Krim’s heart fluttered: it was as if all the projectors had been pointed at his soul.

  The crowd had stopped dancing, stunned. People exchanged sarcastic looks. Krim came and sat down next to his Aunt Zoulikha, who was studying him with her piercing eyes highlighted with kohl. His grey suit was torn at the sleeves and his jacket, though buttoned, failed to conceal a bloodstain on his shirt’s front pocket.

  Aunt Zoulikha put her hand on Krim’s clenched fist and brought it towards her to give it a noisy kiss. She then searched her blouse for a ring, which she slipped on her great-nephew’s finger. It was his father’s ring, the one that his mother had wanted Krim to keep after his death.

  ‘You’d lost it under the table, my son.’

  Krim saw that she was holding Ferhat’s snuff box in her other hand. She was the lost property fairy, Aunt Zoulikha. He got up and went to the toilets, noticing along the way that the Kabyle ditty was beginning to annoy the guests.

  ‘Wallah – what is this, a wedding or a funeral?’

  There were even a few whistles, but Krim stopped himself from looking at any one of these particular savages, for fear of losing what was left of his composure.

  At the same moment, Bouzid had stopped talking to listen to Ait Menguellet and his smooth accent, that perfect Kabyle he would never speak half as well as the singer. Suddenly he noticed a pair of hands groping Kamelia’s breasts from behind. Kamelia turned around and threw her glass of Coke at the man who’d dared touch her. Bouzid pushed his niece aside and landed a first punch on the guy’s face. The groper’s companions jumped on Bouzid, whose rage easily conquered the two boys. He kept hold of the one who’d disrespected Kamelia, engaging him in a full-on fight. They were tearing at each other’s clothes, screaming before the horrified eyes of the women who yelled for them to stop.

  The jostling that followed propelled itself like a wave and finally engulfed Ferhat, who fell to the ground and lost his ushanka. Fouad and Raouf, who had run up to see what was happening, helped their old uncle back to his feet. They didn’t see at first what he had on his scalp and therefore didn’t understand why a woman had fainted on looking down at their great-uncle. The only surprise for them was that he no longer had any hair. How many times had they exalted the curly mane that aroused the jealousy of every uncle and brother-in-law bald by the age of thirty?

  Raouf picked up the ushanka and offered it to Fouad, who refused it with trembling hands. On Ferhat’s shaven head had been drawn, in indelible ink, two swastikas, one of which was in the wrong direction. Just at the nape of his neck they’d added a circumcised cock with a fat pair of hairy balls.

  The music had stopped and the bride’s mother tried to make some space around the profaned old man. Krim slipped through the crowd and stood motionless before his uncle’s vanquished body.

  Fouad took charge, put the ushanka back on Ferhat’s head and helped him towards the exit. There was talk of going to the police straight away. Krim wanted to take Ferhat’s other shoulder, but Fouad looked at him darkly.

  ‘Krim, this is not the right time!’

  Krim stood dumbfounded in the midst of the disaster. The sweat-drenched crowd looked at him as if it was all his fault. Someone had the bad idea of filming the passageway cleared for Fouad and Ferhat. The image was eminently cinematic, but Krim didn’t care: he snatched the digital camera from the young man’s hands and threw it onto the floor.

  There was more unrest a few metres from there: Aunt Zoulikha had just passed out on hearing the news. While the other aunts rushed over to her, Krim noticed Mouloud Benbaraka’s motionless face observing him from the stage, just heads away. From afar, Benbaraka seemed to have two glass eyes. He finally nodded towards Krim and made, with his extended index finger, the same cutthroat gesture Luna had given him a little earlier in the day.

  L’Eternité Neighbourhood, 4.20 a.m.

  Krim ran towards the car park. He sprinted his way back up the bend and then along the road that descended towards the former industrial park, now pompously renamed a high-tech business zone. By the time he slowed down to catch his breath, he was on the verge of tears. So he ran even faster, through the residential areas and the already outdated futuristic buildings that sprouted like mushrooms throughout these former industrial sites. Half an hour later he was in front of 16 rue de l’Eternité. He vomited again and ran up the stairs leading to th
e third floor where he’d grown up. The key was in the rubbish chute, attached to the piping as usual. He went into the flat and straight to his bedroom. He made his bed, like his mother had been asking him to do for a week. He swept up the tobacco crumbs that dirtied his computer table, and even went so far as to dust his green pillowcase.

  In the kitchen he used the last drops of washing-up liquid to clean the few plates and cutlery that had been waiting for him since the day before in the silence of the stainless steel sink. Then he sat down on a chair and looked at his bloody hands, looked at them for so long that he seemed on the point of unravelling their mystery.

  He found the vacuum cleaner in the junk room and opened it to empty the bag into the rubbish. He swept the corridor, picked up the visible litter in Luna’s bedroom and entered his mother’s, which still smelled faintly of paint. The conjugal bed where she had slept for years was made. Krim sat down in front of the dressing table and observed the make-up set and, above it, the little poster of Chaouch that read: The future is now.

  He tore down the poster and threw it in the bin.

  A lamp and three books stood on the bedside table: Anna Karenina, which Fouad had recommended to her; Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody; and Choosing Dawn by Chaouch. Krim opened the drawer and examined a few photos of his father, especially the one from the Christmas when he had died and seemed to weigh no more than forty kilos. He put the ring away in the back of the drawer and went off to his bedroom to roll a joint. After smoking it he felt like masturbating. He switched on the computer, avoided Firefox so as not to be tempted to go on Facebook, and found his favourite video, which he’d downloaded from YouTube, converted into .flv format and hidden in a fake file cleverly called Job Centre. In the video two fifteen-year-old American girls wiggled around to a rap song while trying to lip-synch between fits of giggles. The one on the right was round, brown and insignificant, but the one on the left, with light brown hair and green eyes, was tall, white, with wide shoulders. She shook her enormous bosom in a skintight yellow t-shirt, apparently unaware that when her friend moved her hips in the same way, no one even noticed her.