‘Anyway, you’ve got till this evening to vote,’ Dounia stated, sending her one last worried look. ‘Go with Bouzid, he gets off work at five.’
In the rear-view mirror, Fouad noticed a silhouette standing in front of a silver BMW double-parked at the end of the street. He didn’t give it another thought as he went off to fetch Kamelia, who was staying with her parents.
Although based in Paris for several years now, Fouad still voted in Saint-Etienne, in the northern constituency. On entering the community centre car park, he remembered Uncle Ferhat’s fall and gritted his teeth. Slim was waiting for them next to the astonishingly dense line at the gym entrance.
‘You see that?’ he said in amazement as he kissed his brother. ‘He’s bound to be elected with all the people who’ve come to vote! And look, there are only Arabs.’ Realizing he was showing a bit too much enthusiasm, given the previous night’s events, the young groom lowered his voice and asked for news of Ferhat and Zoulikha.
Fouad took care not to lay into him in any way.
Fortunately, the ever-joyful Kamelia arrived behind Slim, slipped her arms around his stomach and lifted her featherweight cousin off the ground.
‘I hardly saw you yesterday! Mr “Groom” … Zarma, look at him,’ she said to Luna, who had joined them. ‘Little Slim’s a real man now. So where’s your wife?’
‘Same, she’s gone to vote. She’s voting in the south of Saint-Etienne.’
Fouad looked for his mother and spotted her at the foot of a poplar tree that shivered in the wind like a gorilla. He didn’t join her straight away, thinking of those nights he couldn’t sleep because of her, because of both the small and the big threats that hung over her. No immediate threat, in truth, just that little leaden fact, that little fact that was too heavy to bear for a normal human conscience: that one day his mother would die.
He went to kiss her and was angry with himself for having made her cry earlier at the hospital, by mentioning Nazir. ‘Sorry, Mum,’ he whispered in her ear.
‘Come on, love, we’re going to vote. At least there’s one good thing in this nightmare. I mean honestly,’ she continued, joining the line, ‘how can you do that to an old man? Wallah, I don’t understand how such monstrous people can exist.’
Fouad remained silent.
‘Take me back to the hospital after, okay, love? I don’t want Zoulikha to be left all alone.’
‘But isn’t Granny with her?’
‘Even worse if she is.’
Fouad made sure that the whole smala had an ID and polling card. Luna came up to him and grabbed his hand like a little girl.
‘What’s up, cutie?’ asked her big cousin.
‘I’m worried,’ she said, frowning.
‘But it’s just a polling station, come on.’
‘No,’ she smiled, ‘it’s not about that, it’s about my results. I may be getting on France’s junior national team. Well, fingers crossed …’
‘I didn’t know, that’s fantastic!’
Fouad rubbed the future star athlete’s shoulders while looking at Slim, who was fluttering among his cousins, all excited despite the circumstances, unless – the thought made him pinch Luna’s trapezia too hard and she cried out – it was because of them, because of the tragedy of the previous night, and because of the power that tragedies have to bring clans together. Fouad shook his head to chase away these strange ideas, which were very unlike him. He decided to set an example and was the first to put his paper in the ballot box. A voice boomed out confirmation that he had carried out his civic responsibility:
‘Voted!’
At the same moment Mouloud Benbaraka found the key by the rubbish chute on Rabia’s landing. He inserted it very carefully into the lock and found himself face to face with Rabia.
‘Om … ar …’
She was holding a glass of grenadine, which she dropped on seeing the intruder reach out with his long muscular hand to stop her from screaming.
Paris, 1.30 p.m.
Aurélie took Krim by the wrist and led him through a series of crisp, bright rooms.
‘Here’s my father’s office.’
‘What does your father do?’
‘He’s an investigating judge, but he’s away in Rome for the weekend with my mother. You’ve never heard of Judge Wagner? He was almost killed a few years ago by some Corsicans. So now my father always carries a gun and has two bodyguards at his side, at all times. They were there in the South, don’t you remember?’
Krim took in the room, whose panelled walls were covered with books. Aurélie invited him to sit in her father’s swivel chair and spun him around at top speed. Krim stopped the movement by catching the edge of the desk. The chair screeched, and he got up and looked at the buttons gleaming in the intimidating dark green padding.
‘What kind of piece does he carry?’
‘You know about guns?’
‘Totally,’ Krim stupidly boasted. ‘I know how to shoot, and everything.’ He didn’t dare speak in longer sentences, fearing she’d notice his accent. Whenever he was in the presence of foreigners – that is, of people not from Saint-Etienne – he couldn’t stop hearing the accent and found it abominable.
Tristan shouted from the living room. It was ready.
‘What?’ Krim asked.
‘The MDMA … You’ve never taken any? You’ll see, it’s crazy. Ecstasy gets rid of all the shitty things inside you. It’s the love drug, you know? While it lasts, you’re in paradise, and afterwards you don’t even feel like you’re coming back down. It’s sweet,’ she whispered, eyes closed, ‘it’s so sweet that it’s sweet even when it stops being sweet.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know it. I think I had some once.’
Krim had the sneaking suspicion that she’d taken some the night before, at the party, and that she was still under the influence. Was it because of the MDMA that she’d replied on Facebook? Was it because of the love drug that she’d invited him to her place and called him her little Kabyle prince? The thought depressed him.
But he merely had to look back up at her breasts swelling under her t-shirt to regain faith in her, faith in love, faith in life.
He followed her like a ghost from room to room. She always walked in the same jaunty way, even though they were no longer on shiny sand or flagstones sprinkled with pine needles magnified by her little feet.
When they reached the living room, Tristan left the coffee table to kiss Aurélie on the lips. She rejected him and lay down on the sofa, one leg above the edge. She stretched out like a kitten, her bosom doubled in size, making the metal buttons of her dungarees click.
Krim saw her misty, loving eyes and realized she was stoned.
‘Who are you going to vote for?’ Tristan asked provocatively.
‘Who? Me?’
‘What do you think, Nico, who’s he going to vote for? Go on, tell us about the sociology of elections, show us there’s a point in spending three years studying political science!’ His narrow eyes closed when he spoke. It was as if a demon was speaking through him.
Nico refused to play his little game, and Aurélie came to Krim’s defence.
‘But that’s meaningless, Tristan, you can be so stupid sometimes. I’m too young, but I would have voted for Chaouch. For sure.’
‘Because he’s the most handsome,’ Tristan replied. He had the power to silence the gathering without even opening his mouth. ‘You’d vote for the one you felt like fucking. You little slut. I remain loyal to my convictions.’
‘Your convictions, my arse.’
‘Hold on, I’ve been with the young conservatives for two years now,’ Tristan said with his wolf-like smile. ‘And you know what? I wouldn’t mind voting for a candidate from an ethnic background. So long as he can do the job, that is. You have to judge someone by their ideas, not their origin. We’ve never said anything else.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Aurélie said sarcastically.
But Krim didn’t understand who was mocking whom. Appa
lled by Tristan’s tone, he stepped back and knocked over a halogen lamp.
‘Do you mind putting on a bit of music instead of smashing everything?’ Tristan pointed to an iPad on the marbled mantelpiece of the fireplace.
Krim obliged, hoping the conversation would stop there, thanks to the music. But once he was standing in front of the expensive gadget, it took all his mental energy to avoid his own reflection in the mirror.
‘Hey, come on!’ Tristan said impatiently. ‘Put on something cool, some techno … Come to think of it, just play whatever you like. And watch the computer, right.’
Krim considered taking the precious tablet and smashing it on the blonde bastard’s head. He went onto Spotify and almost typed ‘Ait Menguellet’ into the search box. Instead he put in ‘Kanye West’.
On the first cello notes from his favourite version of ‘All of the Lights’, he heard a few sighs of disappointment. But not from Aurélie, who had roused herself and was staring at Krim’s reflection, hoping to catch his eyes. Krim looked up and tried to communicate to her his distress, his utter distress.
She was going to react when Tristan forced her head towards the tray.
‘Hey stop, you idiot,’ she protested before she burst out laughing.
Krim turned around and said he had an urgent meeting.
‘With who?’ Aurélie asked, concerned.
‘It’s nothing, with my cousin.’
‘Stay a bit longer,’ she said with as much conviction as he would have wished for. ‘You should try the MDMA. I swear, just try it. Come on, you’re trying it, right?’
For the first time Krim found her repulsive. She had said right one tone above the rest. Posh girls would always be posh girls, no matter what. His hesitation evaporated. He wasn’t going to try her drug. He was looking for an honest way to tell her when Tristan said a name that made him jump. He approached him.
‘What did you say?’
‘What?’ Tristan asked defensively, sliding the tray out of range of the row that might break out.
‘You said a name, come on, say it again.’
Tristan’s blue eyes burned with gratuitous nastiness, that kind of nastiness that a smile of self-derision suffices to justify. ‘Fuck, we’re having a joke. For Christ’s sake, you’re not very funny, are you?’
Krim felt like killing him. ‘What name?’
‘He means Krikri, I think,’ one of the other guys offered – the skinny one – to defuse the conflict. His was the girl’s voice Krim had heard behind the door.
‘Why did you call me Krikri?’ he screamed. He shoved Tristan’s chest and stepped back over to the fireplace while the other guys tried not to laugh.
Tristan burst into laughter when Aurélie took Krim’s scabby hand to comfort him.
‘Krim, I’m sorry, don’t bother with these morons.’
Touching the smooth skin he’d fantasized over for months no longer did anything for him. He began to observe the love of his life in an attentive, slow-motion stupor: he didn’t scrutinize her, didn’t stare at her either; it was rather as if his eyes were following the last flames of a torch cast into the abyss. He withdrew his fingers from Aurélie’s and took his head in his hands.
He kicked the coffee table and fled just as the guys were getting up to confront him.
Paris, 2 p.m.
He ran out into the street, circled the block, stumbled several times, and ended up calling Nazir. No reply. To calm himself down, Krim went along the Canal Saint-Martin. But there was too much commotion, too much life, too much sunlight. Everyone’s good mood hurt him, and the slightest climb took his breath away. His hands were trembling, and his headaches would be back in no time.
The scene was something he’d never seen in the streets of Saint-Etienne – this excitement, this trembling of an order that seemed to him more rich, more noble, more alive than anything he’d experienced up until then. People were better dressed, and with care; the long pedestrian street where the market ended was crowded, but not with old ladies wearing Reeboks and Algerian dresses who heckled him to come and help open their bags. No one here took the slightest notice of him, least of all the Arabs who haggled loudly but went silent when Krim passed by their stall.
A brass band appeared, materializing on a small crowded square at the foot of a fountain. Confident and knowingly dishevelled, the group of happy young students played some jazz tunes. The trombone was one pitch beneath the other instruments, but … was it? Krim concentrated, the only one among the passers-by to really listen to their music. But it was a disaster: he could no longer make out where the notes went in the complex scale that his ear was used to creating on its own, like the information screen that separates the external world from the hyperactive little brain inside Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator.
‘La Marseillaise! La Marseillaise!’ shouted a woman with long curly hair.
Faced with cheers from the colourful crowd of listeners, the students didn’t have to debate for long to play it as an encore. You could hear it sung by several people, of all colours, fathers who carried their babies on their shoulders, groups of teenage girls, activists who pretended to raise their fists while looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes.
When the last notes rang out, Krim remembered his mother’s ritual at the beginning of World Cup matches: she always added to the four final notes of the national anthem a booming ‘you bunch of pigs’ – in response to the line about impure blood watering their furrows – four C notes drummed in with a tone of joyful parody as she frowned and proudly lifted her chin.
A little further on, Krim saw a line that ran the whole street, leading to a school converted into a polling station. He scrutinized each of the faces in the line, especially the white and docile family men, who looked away when Krim passed by. This way they had of not looking at him, as if he had the plague – it was as if a pack of invisible canines had barked upon smelling a dope-smoking little Arab boy. He continued along the pavement, observing the imperfect circle of the sun floating in the gutter. The clouds overtook it as Krim veered off the school’s street and away from the overexcited people who talked of the ‘great day’.
After half an hour of running, Krim miraculously found the Seine. Thinking he heard gulls’ cries, he looked up to the sky and was joined by an old man with blue eyes who also looked up, rubbing his hands behind his back.
‘Ah yes, there are the gulls. There’s a rubbish dump over there.’
Krim took his leave of the old man and crossed the bridge that looked out on the other side of Notre-Dame. His mobile vibrated.
Received: Today at 2.56 p.m.
From: N
Come on, it’s over now. Come to the meeting place or you’ll regret it.
Krim called Nazir once, twice, three times. A tear ran down his cheek. He texted him to go to hell.
Received: Today at 2.58 p.m.
From: N
With all I’ve done for you, this is how you thank me? You drop me like a piece of shit?
Krim stopped at the middle of the bridge and watched a dinghy slipping across the waves, as it had done last summer with Aurélie. He texted Nazir that it was over, that he could no longer trust him, that he was aborting his mission.
If you bother me again I’ll call
Fouad and explain that you paid me to shoot at a guy.
Nazir replied ten seconds later:
Received: Today at 3 p.m.
From: N
We’ll see about that.
In the two minutes that followed, Krim received three text messages consisting simply of photos, of poor quality, but in which he had no difficulty making out his mother stretched out sideways on her bed, like in a vision of horror, that nightmare vision he’d recounted to Nazir. Except that here she wasn’t alone in the darkness, but watched over by Mouloud Benbaraka, Mouloud Benbaraka sitting on the edge of the bed and whose fixed and unhealthy smile left no doubt about his real intentions.
Krim threw his teleph
one over the guardrail. He heard it land on a pleasure boat where tourists were taking photos of Notre-Dame’s prestigious backside while desperately seeking passers-by to wave at. As a young foreign woman picked up his mobile, Krim collapsed on the pavement, grabbed his knees in his hands and screamed.
Saint-Etienne, neighbourhood of Montreynaud, 3 p.m.
Bouzid took advantage of the red light to remove his suffocating Saint-Etienne Transport Service vest. When his bus started off again, he noticed groups of young people running down the middle of the road, all in the same direction. There were boys, girls, and adults as well. They were coming from all the housing projects on the hill, galloping like zebras in the savannah. Bouzid turned around and saw that his bus was almost empty. Two old men in threadbare jackets strained to hear the news on the radio. Thinking they looked just like Ferhat, he turned the sound up and followed the parade of runners along this winding road he knew by heart.
Sundays were typically difficult for Bouzid: he could listen to neither Ruquier on Europe 1 nor the Loud Mouths on RMC, his favourite programme. But the news of this particular day was better than anything. Hordes of people were gathering in towns across the country, on the Canebière in Marseilles, all shouting ‘Cha-ouch, Cha-ouch, Cha-ouch’. Near a bend in the road, Bouzid noticed an impressive crowd massed on a small square where a large screen had been erected since his last pass-through an hour earlier; usually it was set up for football away matches.
The street was jammed, and for the first time in his life Bouzid felt it for real – that famous ‘electricity in the air’. After a few beeps of the horn he gave up on splitting the dense crowd. Some small boys were climbing the plane trees to see the screen. Instead of calling the central office Bouzid stood up on his seat and saw what everyone was looking at: candidate Chaouch greeting photographers, accompanied by his wife, his daughter and his adviser, the one who had a stump instead of a right hand.
His first reflex was to call Rabia to recount the scene. When something extraordinary happened, Rabia was the best person to call: she was both very impressionable and a very good audience. You never wasted an anecdote by choosing to share it with her.
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