Savages- The Wedding

by Sabri Louatah

  ‘And what about the one o’clock news?’ she asked, already preparing to announce the change of programme to her men.

  A secure telephone was handed to Habib, who began to bellow, ‘What can I do about it? Yes, I told him, but he doesn’t give a shit about the news! He says that this “I get up early to set an example” masquerade means very little to him … Look, we can take advantage of this – after all, Martine’s voted, Malek as well, everyone’s voted, it might not be as disastrous as it looks … What? Right now? He’s with Esther, we’re forbidden to enter … Listen, Jean-Séb, I’ve already explained all that to him but then again he’s not wrong in that the big community gatherings are going to kill us, we need to keep full control on the visuals. Hold on, hold on, they’re already announcing thousands of people at Charléty Stadium, all the Arabs from the northern neighbourhoods in Marseilles are heading into the Canebière, fuck, you know how many people are expected by the Grogny town hall?’

  The chief of security thought he was asking an actual question and made two times ten with her hands. Twenty thousand people. She had reconnoitered the place herself a week earlier and based her estimate on the enormous – though probably lesser – crowd that had taken them by surprise on the morning of the first round.

  ‘Calm down,’ Habib continued. ‘What I mean is that the image of Chaouch acclaimed by twenty thousand Arabs on the square of his town hall is a total catastrophe for the one o’clock news. What’s the silent majority going to think when they see Chaouch being applauded by overexcited Arabs on the street at siesta time? No, this can’t happen, people are going to think: he’s the Arabs’ candidate, imagine what it will look like … Hold on, calm down, listen to me, this may well be the largest gathering of Arabs ever seen in France, we need to do some damage control ASAP. He’s going to visit the war monument for the one o’clock news and will vote this afternoon, around three, three-thirty. I’ve got security here, we’ll get organized … Anyway we can’t make him change his …’

  Jean-Sébastien Vogel, the campaign director, had hung up on him.

  Commander Simonetti held an emergency meeting in the adjacent room and confirmed role distribution. Her grey-suited staff generally avoided looking her straight in the eye. They were hard, sharpened men: the best. The bodyguard operation hadn’t changed since the new chief had taken over: Luc on the left side, Simonetti herself on the ‘shoulder’ – the right side, closest to Chaouch – and Marco as ‘Kevlar’, named for the armoured briefcase that was, in the event of an attack, to be unfolded from the head to the knees of the VIP under protection. Around this first circle were two other concentric circles, while from the mobile division there was the hulking ‘JP’, whose bass voice made their earpieces tremble.

  A few moments after the briefing, young Major Aurélien Couteaux went to see his boss to notify her that he had agreed to change positions with a colleague. It involved being Kevlar in place of Marco, who was having some gastric issues and didn’t feel well.

  Valérie Simonetti, who was simultaneously listening to a report from JP in her earpiece, asked him to repeat what he’d said. She’d understood the first time but she wanted to be sure that the tiny twitch in Couteaux’s left cheek wasn’t accidental.

  ‘No, no,’ she finally decided, removing her earpiece, ‘this is not the time to make last-minute changes.’

  Couteaux was the youngest in the group, the most recently arrived, with excellent grades and all the possible and imaginable recommendations – a bit too many for Simonetti’s taste. All the more so as he’d failed the driving tests but had still been kept on at the SGPR; he was the only one of the policemen in the group who possessed neither of the special red and green driver’s licences.

  The young major stifled his frustration with difficulty and threw out his last argument, veins bulging at his temples: ‘Chief Lindon had no problem with …’

  She cut him down with one look and assigned him to the second circle of bodyguards and the second car following the cortège.

  ‘Very well, boss,’ Couteaux said, bowing, his eyebrows furrowing to process his punishment.

  He disappeared into the toilets and made a call on his private phone.

  Valérie Simonetti knocked twice on the door behind which the candidate was sharing a private moment with his wife: two discrete, resolute knocks, to which Chaouch replied, ‘No!’ with a smile in his voice. She pushed the door open and saw the Socialist Party presidential candidate with his shirt open, standing close to his wife, who was in high heels, hair undone. They were dancing to the words of an old song that Chaouch apparently knew by heart:

  ‘Darling, je vous aime beaucoup, je ne sais pas what to do … You’ve completely stolen my heart … Do you know the singer Jean Sablon, Valérie?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, you should!’ he retorted, plunging his shining eyes into the bosom of his wife.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How about you, Mrs Chaouch, do you like Jean Sablon?’ he laughed, drawing his wife towards the bright spot by the window.

  Simonetti stepped gingerly ahead of Deputy Chaouch to make sure that the curtained window posed no threat, as he began to sing again in his beautiful, full, grave voice, exaggerating his French accent:

  ‘Oh chérie, my love for you is très, très fort … Wish my English were good enough, I’d tell you so much more … Valérie, relax, this may be the last time that we can breathe for a while.’

  ‘The last non-bullet-proof window,’ Esther Chaouch murmured, her beautiful grey eyes fixed on the incandescent light blowing through the curtains.

  While buttoning up her husband’s white shirt a few moments later, she had the unpleasant premonition that it was their love life she was closing up in a straitjacket. It was the first time in a year that she’d found herself alone with him in broad daylight, the first time she could button up his shirt without half a dozen advisers barking from the four corners of the room. She looked down at the cufflinks that shone like his big hazel eyes. He’d switched his phone off and formally forbidden entry to the pack, but Esther could hear them whispering, pressing against the door, fighting for a front seat at history in the making.

  On slipping the tie under her husband’s collar, she understood that it would be worse, considerably worse, when he was elected. But he didn’t worry about that: he looked at her without fear, but rather with his usual assurance, his simple, mischievous, joyful air.

  To prolong this exceptional moment, she made a double knot in his tie. ‘Well, see you, darling. I fear I have to let in the dogs of war now.’

  ‘Cry our last havoc,’ he recited in suave and now perfect English, ‘and let slip the dogs of war …’

  ‘Go on, Shakespeare, go find your dogs of war.’

  Esther kissed him and stepped aside. Valérie allowed herself an über-professional smile to respond to the irresistible one the candidate gave her, and announced that everyone was waiting for him. Chaouch checked his personal smartphone and beamed: he had received a message from Chicago – Sari Essman, the American election expert, was telling him that she would have to call him monsieur le président from now on.

  ‘Everything all right, sir?’ Valérie Simonetti asked.

  He clicked his tongue. ‘Yep. Let’s go and win this thing now.’

  She preceded him in the corridor while confirming his exit into the earpiece. Before regaining the cortège, she inquired about Marco’s gastric problems. Marco didn’t understand what she meant, but confirmed that Couteaux had asked to be Kevlar, to which he’d replied that it wasn’t for him to decide.

  Baffled, Commander Simonetti heard the voice of JP in her earpiece:

  ‘We’re taking the decoy car. I repeat: we’re taking the decoy car.’

  She put Chaouch and his wife in the second Volkswagen SUV with tinted windows. There was no particular reason behind the choice of official vehicle or decoy; to foil the predictions of eventual criminals, the decision always had to be made at the
last minute.

  The procession set off. It consisted of about twenty vehicles. At the front were the motorcycle escorts in full dress uniform, who had to clear the path and make sure the motorcade didn’t stop. Behind them was a marked car from the local police station, its lights flashing. A dark blue vehicle from the SGPR set the tempo, followed by an identical car transporting the officer in charge of the team. A second flock of seven motorcycles in V-formation protected the most sensitive part of the lineup: two heavily armoured Volkswagen Touareg SUVs, one of them housing the candidate, flanked by a Ford Galaxy and three more motorcycles. At the tail-end of the procession rode various vehicles carrying the campaign staff and medical personnel, trailed at last by a minivan hauling the Tactical Support Team, comprising four heavily armed men with helmets, body armour and assault rifles ready to counter a commando attack.

  Chaouch was not supposed to know the details of the meticulous organization that had accompanied his every move since he’d received threats from AQIM. He was even less aware that Valérie, sitting on the passenger seat and always quick to smile at one of his jokes, hid a full arsenal under her multicoloured suit. She wore a Glock 17 automatic pistol on her right hip, and, just in case it jammed, a Glock 26 in an inverted holster, its butt vertical to allow the weapon to be drawn more quickly. Harnessed to her reinforced metal belt was a torch lamp, a small tear gas canister, and a stun grenade. In addition, she sported the radio harness, which delivered one wire along her arm to her wrist microphone, the other down her back across the strap of her bra and up to her earpiece, which had been moulded to measure after a visit to the otolaryngologist.

  It was through this earpiece that Chaouch’s guardian angel learned that the clearance team sent to secure the route had nothing to report. She allowed herself a second’s rest and studied the candidate’s body language in the rear-view mirror. This was the strangest part of her work: she had to know every slightest twitch of the man she protected, she had to know him even better than his inner circle, in order to adapt his protection to potential unexpected movements. The anticipation of his every move pertained to a form of magical, or at least inexplicable, empathy. And so, that afternoon, while the motorcade sped along the banks of the Seine, Commander Simonetti couldn’t help noticing that, for the first time, Chaouch’s right knee began to tremble as soon as the two-toned sirens of one car called to another, erupting into a cacophony of whistling. He was supposed to be used to this by now…

  Quai de Seine, 12 p.m.

  A good hour had passed since Krim had decided to hail a taxi. He didn’t dare signal them the way he’d seen it done in films, and those whose windows he’d knocked on had refused to take him, supposedly because they were taking a break or didn’t have the right to take customers near a metro station, but more likely because Krim’s appearance wasn’t very reassuring.

  One finally stopped at the edge of a road along the Seine. Krim looked up as he got in. Cars were stopping at a green light to let pass an armada of official vehicles escorted by a swarm of armed riders. Passers-by claimed it was Chaouch on his way to vote in Grogny. Krim felt moved at the thought that everyone was stopping to let him pass. He embodied the Republic, the State, Sovereignty. Krim remembered the day when his father, who’d stopped at a red light, had exceptionally been authorized to cross it for a few metres to let a wailing ambulance through. The endangered life of another person was more important than traffic laws, as was the passage of the king. Noble things still happened in this incomprehensible world.

  Not daring to sit alone on the back seat, Krim asked if he could sit in the front. The taxi driver shrugged and asked him where he was going.

  ‘To the Buttes-Chaumont,’ Krim replied before looking at his mobile and noticing with astonishment that Nazir had stopped his frantic calls.

  ‘Yes, but where at the Buttes-Chaumont?’

  Krim gave him the piece of paper scrawled with the address. The driver switched on the meter and set off again. ‘Let’s hit the road!’

  His father used to say exactly the same thing. All those men, Krim thought, all those men who weren’t his father. It was an outrage – more than an outrage. There was still no word to say what it was.

  The radio spewed out figures for the voter turnout overseas, and soon, thanks to a leak, those for mainland France: just over thirty-nine per cent at midday, a substantial twelve-point increase on the first round. An absolute record, one journalist effused before cueing a satellite link-up to Tulle, where one of Chaouch’s defeated rivals at the primaries reminded everyone in a cheerful voice to what extent this day was historic, ‘whatever the result’.

  ‘Well,’ the taxi driver exclaimed, ‘if someone had told me that I was going to live long enough to see an Arab President of France!’

  Krim couldn’t manage to work out his origin: he had sallow skin, a strong nose and dark eyes; his greying hair was curly and his accent sounded like his uncles’. Yet he looked French. Krim concluded that he was a Jew and realized it was the first time he’d ever met one. He looked at the chain bracelet on the driver’s wrist, hoping to see a Star of David. But there were only the letters of his name, too many bizarrely configured letters that Krim, whose sight was blurring from lack of sleep, couldn’t put them into order.

  ‘ … that said, it’s not over yet either,’ the driver concluded.

  Six euros and thirty cents later, Krim set his ecru loafers on the pavement of a street that smelled of fish. A bit embarrassed by his appearance (tracksuit and dress shoes), he hesitated.

  But Aurélie sent him a text, and not just any text:

  Received: Today at 12.45 p.m.

  From: A

  Are you coming, my little Kabyle prince?

  It took Krim four tries before he successfully entered the building’s security code. He climbed the stairs, also carpeted with red velvet, one by one, holding on to the gilded banister. There was only one door for the entire second floor. Before ringing the bell, Krim pressed his ear against a peephole made of simple metal hatchings. He’d expected to find Aurélie alone, but he could hear at least two male voices and a female one.

  There were some footsteps in the hallway. Krim stepped back and prepared to retreat down the stairs, but the door opened.

  She was wearing denim dungarees with a long white t-shirt underneath. Her hair was fairer than he remembered, her swimmer’s shoulders wider, her collarbones less prominent.

  Krim thought of the jokes she’d made about her ability to carry small quantities of water in the hollows of her clavicle. Her defiant look hadn’t disappeared, but it was tinged with amusement, with an irony that made him ill at ease. She was holding the end of a joint in her right hand.

  ‘It’s so awesome you could come. Come on in. What’ve you done to your hands? Fuck, that’s blood, isn’t it? You been fighting?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘For a girl I hope.’

  Krim shrugged and let himself be ushered in. The ceilings were high, the floors polished. In the large smoky sitting room where Aurélie led her surprise guest, a fully lit chandelier gave off the unpleasant sensation of artificial daylight. But Krim didn’t care about the light or the outdoors. The sun was in the apartment, astride the sofa, lustily kissing a half-empty bottle of whisky and Coke. Her freckled cheekbones were dazzling, as were her almond-shaped eyes, as insatiably intense in their crafty mischief as in their difference in colour.

  None of the three blokes slumped on the carpet paid any attention to Krim. On the coffee table some flutes of flat champagne sat alongside bottles of wine with labels yellowed by age, probably grands crus taken from their parents’ cellars. Through the glass tabletop, Krim also noticed an open poker box, lined with black foam and filled with red, blue, green, black and white chips.

  ‘Tristan, Tristan!’ shouted one of them, sporting sunglasses and a cigar in his mouth. He was leaning on his elbow. ‘Get over here, man, you’ve been getting ready for an hour.’

  Krim turned his head and s
aw a shirtless guy, helmeted with a shock of blonde hair. He had fine, slender limbs and thin, sarcastic, princely lips. He was holding out a silver tray, filled with little chalk-white crystals, which he set down on the coffee table. Tristan then jumped on the sofa and put his arm round Aurélie’s shoulders while gawking at Krim’s shoes. His own were Dior, embellished with a touch of gold. ‘Hey, come on,’ he said to Krim, accepting the joint, ‘take the divan.’

  Krim didn’t know what a divan was. He muttered something incomprehensible and didn’t even try to stop the rush of blood that made his heart and temples throb. All eyes were soon on him, including Aurélie’s green and brown ones. Her mouth agape, she didn’t understand what was happening.

  Krim slowly turned his tongue in his dry mouth. A mirror hung above an unused fireplace to his left, and he nearly fainted at the sight of his reflection.

  He looked like a camel on a staircase.

  Saint-Etienne, 1 p.m.

  Dounia didn’t want to drive, so Fouad took the wheel. Luna was yawning on the back seat. But when the car arrived at her place to drop off Rabia, who wanted to take a shower and rest for a bit, Luna chose not to go with her.

  ‘Well, why are you going with them?’ Rabia asked her. ‘You can’t even vote so what’s the point?’

  Luna insisted, and Rabia rolled her eyes and closed the door. Dounia’s tired head appeared in the open window: ‘Rab, you sure you don’t want to come? Can’t we rest after?’

  ‘No, no,’ her sister replied. She was teetering from fatigue and the gusts of wind. ‘Wallah, I don’t feel like it, maybe later. And then I have to phone that little sheytan, you just wait, I’m going to strangle him … I swear I’m going to strangle him,’ she repeated before yawning her head off. ‘Fuck, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I’m exhausted. I think I’m going to take a nap …’