#
Honoré Bertin looked at the young man standing before him, clinging to his hat in his hands, and hid a smile. He was enjoying this.
‘My daughter, young man, is much too young to think of marriage.’
‘My mother, Sir, married at fifteen.’
‘Yes, well, that may be. But Therèse may not be interested in you. Have you thought of that, young man? Hey? Have you thought of that?’
Louis looked down at his shoes and clutched his hat tighter – he hadn’t considered that possibility. Had he misjudged Therèse’s interest? Was she simply being polite when they met? No, it wasn’t possible – he knew Therèse had feelings for him. He felt his face flush.
Honoré took a cigar from the humidor on his desk. Sniffed it. Rolled it between his fingers. He stole a glance towards Louis. The boy was looking decidedly uncomfortable. The clock on the mantel ticked, punctuating the seconds. He bit the end off the cigar and spat it across the room. Struck a match and put the flame to the tip, sucking loudly. He leaned back into his chair. Time to put the boy out of his misery.
‘You realise, of course, that my little Therèse is only thirteen?’
‘Yes, Sir. But fourteen next month.’
‘She’s still thirteen. So you will understand when I say that I cannot allow her to even consider your interest until she is older.’
‘But—’
‘Hear me out, boy, hear me out. I’m not blind, you know. I’ve seen how Therèse reacts every time your name comes up in conversations. Oh yes, she thinks no one notices, but I’ve noticed. I’m no fool. And I have a lot of respect for your father. He’s a good man. An honest man. And I think you’re very much like him.’
‘Thank you, Sir.’
‘Yes, I think you’re like him. So here’s what I’ll allow. You may visit Therèse, but only with a chaperone present. Get to know each other. But mind, a chaperone, always. Then, when she turns fifteen, if she is in agreement, you may ask me for her hand. But not a day before, mind. Not a day before.’
‘Yes Sir. I mean, no Sir.’
Honoré puffed on his cigar. ‘Of course, that won’t mean you can marry. I’ll insist on a year-long engagement. I will not approve of my little Therèse marrying before she is sixteen. Do you agree?’
‘Yes. Of course. Yes Sir, definitely.’
‘Good. Your father will be pleased. Good day, young man.’
‘Good afternoon, Sir.’ Louis opened the office door, smiling.
‘Monsieur de Dercou.’
‘Sir?’
‘Remember what I said. Only with a chaperone.’
Honoré Bertin went home to tell his wife the news. He found her in bed, complaining of a fever. Within a week, she too had died.
#
Louis married his Therèse on her sixteenth birthday, with Imez at his side. Marius, who had never forgotten how sincerely the girl had extended her hand to Imez all those years ago, basked in the knowledge that this marriage would be good. As a wedding present, he gave Therèse the gold crucifix and chain that had belonged to his wife – he knew Pauline would have approved of this marriage. To Louis, he gave a chain for his fob watch that he’d had made to order, the links alternating in silver and gold.
Honoré Bertin had passed his half-century and was looking many years older since the death of his wife. He announced at the wedding that he was planning to return to France, and would pass on his businesses to his sons. Marius took him aside during the feast to discuss acquiring a number of properties Bertin intended selling.
A year later, Therèse gave birth to a son. They called him Gilbert. Marius celebrated by buying pure Arabian horses to establish his first haras – one stallion and two mares. Gwafa accompanied him, and showed him how to tell the purebred by counting the ribs, the Arab having one less set than all other breeds.
That same year, to celebrate Louis’ twenty-first birthday, Marius visited a solicitor and made his youngest son equal partner in his ever-growing enterprises, and also made a will, leaving Asif mellul to Louis, with smaller bequests to his other sons.
They built a mill on their land, and the local people came to grind their grain. Marius and Louis’ reputation continued to grow, and the next year Marius was asked to join the Municipal Council.
Therèse, meanwhile, had her own successes. Each year or so she would give Louis yet another son, and Louis would lament that what he really wanted was a little girl. But everyone knew that he was only teasing her – in Louis’ eyes, Therèse could do no wrong, and he loved each of his children. By 1912, they had six boys and Marius had added another storey to the house, and acquired another 300 hectares of land. They had twenty-one people working for them – five in the house alone. Therèse started a small school for the local children and, ignoring the prevailing French idea that only Berbers were intelligent enough to educate, encouraged the Arab children of the area to attend as well. She worried about these children’s state of health, and would start every day’s lessons by serving them a large bowl of soup loaded with vegetables.
Imez had also married during these years. Bahac, his wife, had presented him with three boys and two girls. The eldest boy, now seven, had recently been removed from his mother so that she could no longer influence him, as was the custom, and the young boy could be seen following Imez as he went about his business. Gwafa no longer traded along the traditional routes. Weakened by age and illness, he had ceded his position to Imez, and now lived in a small stone house he had bought in a Berber village, with his daughter-in-law and grandchildren for company. His few outings were limited to visiting Marius.
But if life was proving to be good for Marius and Louis, across the Mediterranean the gods of war were beginning waken.
14
Nicolette and Steven had been in Algiers for three days, and still nothing had happened regarding Boumedienne. The President had been in a coma for four weeks now, and the press releases were all the same – uninformative. Nicolette had taken some pictures of people in the streets, hoping to be able to sell them somewhere, and Steven had written a piece he’d titled After Boumedienne, exploring the possibilities of various new heads of government, but both were beginning to feel bored. The atmosphere in the streets was indifferent. After the initial shock at Boumedienne’s coma the people of Algiers had gone back to their daily routine; it was all taking too long and they all had more pressing commitments.
Jean-Paul had told Nicolette about a rumour he’d picked up from one of his contacts, about a gun deal that was to take place in the area around Constantine. She’d been surprised at his generosity. Possible news items – and potential scoops – were normally heavily guarded secrets, but if Jean-Paul wanted to share what he knew, she wasn’t about to dissuade him. She’d tried to persuade Steven that they should chase it up, but he’d dismissed it.
‘In a place like this, there’ll always be rumours,’ he’d said. ‘Hell, they’re probably even true.’
She’d decided to leave it for the time being. Jean-Paul was going to try to find out more, and if she had more evidence, Steven couldn’t refuse – it was his job, after all, she’d insist, and she still wanted to go to Constantine. Wanted to see if she could find Jamilah and Rafiq again. She was beginning to realise the friendship they’d shared, like the friendship between her grandfather and Imez, had not been the norm. Her grandfather had known this, and so had she, as a child, otherwise why would they have kept it secret? In Australia she’d forgotten how rare their friendship was, but now it was becoming important again. She’d tried to explain it to Steven, but he’d seemed not to understand.
As for going to Constantine, for whatever reason, he was non-committal – while not exactly against the idea, he preferred Jean-Paul’s suggestion of a day trip to Chiffa Gorge, about fifty kilometres or so south-west of the capital, to see the Barbary macaques. Nicolette knew not to push. She decided to leave Constantine until after Chiffa.
#
They had left Algiers before dawn, h
aving been told the monkeys were more often seen early in the morning, or at dusk. They’d crossed the Mitidja Plains just as it began to snow, and were now driving through the town of Blida. Fountains built by the Moors in the early sixteenth century were still in evidence everywhere, and the ancient citrus groves surrounding the town were a testimony to their skill with irrigation.
Already the road was becoming crowded with lorries and buses. Jean-Paul drove the car he’d borrowed from a friend, Steven dozed in the front seat. DJ sat in the back beside Nicolette, staring out the window and continuously tapping his lap to a tune only he could hear. Once out of the town they followed the road up the Throats of Chiffa to the Ruisseau des Singes – the Brook of Monkeys – and it was light by the time they reached the hotel where they parked the car.
Nicolette followed Steven along the overhanging path, her duffle coat hugged close around her. On either side jagged rock and forests of cedar and Holm oaks reached for the sky. The air was crisp, pungent. Soft fluffy snow accumulated in crevices amongst the rocks. Nicolette stopped and looked down at the brook below their path but couldn’t see any monkeys. She raised her face to the sky and closed her eyes, taking pleasure in the cold tickle of snowflakes melting on her skin. She felt Jean-Paul touch her arm and was aware DJ had stopped talking mid-sentence. She opened her eyes.
There were about twenty of them – adults and young – making their way to the brook to drink, their stumpy tails barely visible beneath their greyish brown fur. Nicolette and the men moved slowly to sit on nearby rocks, but the monkeys were used to humans and, apart from an initial curious glance, ignored the group. Nicolette took her camera out of her bag and focused.
She photographed a young female grooming a youngster, then took some shots of them drinking. The female, her genitals red and swollen, stopped grooming the youngster and presented to a male nearby who, smacking his lips loudly, mounted her. The baby of the group ran to the rock face and leaned against it, watching the couple.
A larger male – his fur lighter than the other monkeys – also noticed the couple and screamed. He charged towards them, his lips retracted into a wide yawn so as to better show long canine teeth. The threatened male dismounted the female and turned away from his attacker, looking down at the ground and grimacing, but this gesture of submission didn’t slow the attacker. The baby by the rock face screamed and made an attempt to join the female, but as it left the safety of the rock its movements caught the attention of the big male who snapped, catching the baby behind the neck.
The mountainside reverberated with the screams of macaques, but this only incited the big male further. Blood stained the soft fur of the tiny monkey and splattered on the snow around them, and still the big male shook the small macaque until, anger spent, he dropped it to the ground and ran from the brook.
The other macaques followed, except for the female who went to the baby monkey and lifted it by the arms as if to make it stand, all the while making soft cooing sounds, but it crumpled to the ground as soon as she let go of its arms. She stopped cooing and once more tried to make the baby stand. When it crumpled to the ground again she stood there looking at it, not moving, until at last she turned and disappeared in the direction the other monkeys had taken.
The whole mountainside was silent, except for the whirl of Nicolette’s motor drive.
‘Nicolette, let go.’ Jean-Paul took Nicolette’s finger off the shutter of her camera. ‘Let go of the camera. It’s over.’
Nicolette pulled her gaze from the brook and looked at Jean-Paul. She nodded. Packed her camera back into her bag.
‘Wow. Mind-blowing,’ said DJ.
‘You okay, Nicky?’ Jean-Paul stood before her, blocking her view. ‘You look awfully pale…’
‘Why shouldn’t she be?’ Steven asked. ‘You’re not going to pass out on us, are you?’
She shook her head and pulled her coat tighter around herself, shivering.
‘Good. Come on, then, let’s get back to the car. I’m starving.’
Nicolette pushed passed him. ‘Bastard.’
‘What? What did I say? Good god, woman, if you can’t handle that, you shouldn’t be here.’
#
Nicolette half listened to Steven and DJ discuss the usual propaganda that had been given to them by the Press Office the night before. She’d been quiet for the trip back to Algiers, angry at Steven’s insensitivity, but the hot cup of strong black coffee had revived her somewhat. She wished Jean-Paul had joined them, but he’d wanted to return the car. It had stopped snowing and weak sunlight broke through the clouds. She sipped her second cup and watched white-robed women weave their way around the market stalls lining the square, like eels around riverweed. At a table across from theirs, an old man read a newspaper through thick black-rimmed glasses. She took her camera out of its bag and checked the frame counter – three shots left. She focused on Steven and clicked.
‘Hey, don’t do that,’ DJ said, annoyed.
‘It’s ok, let her.’
Nicolette took another shot of Steven. He ignored her. She finished the film with a shot of DJ. Rewound it and with a key scratched the subject matter on the canister.
Across the square a man was pushing a handcart on which balanced a pyramid of fragile sugarcane cages secured with bits of string, each with a live chicken inside. A little boy with a mop of black hair, wearing an oversized blue t-shirt on which the jaws of a great white shark advertised Jaws II, approached the man from behind and mimed being a chicken. Quickly Nicolette dropped the used film into her bag, fed another in her camera and slipped the strap around her neck. She focussed across the square. The boy was still miming being a chicken, cluck-clucking and laughing, and the man turned, hand raised as if to strike the boy, but his movement overbalanced the cart so that it tipped, crashing the cages to the ground. The chickens squawked in fear, some escaping the broken cages and flapping amongst the crowd. The man swore at the boy who ran, laughing, to a safer part of the square. Nicolette’s camera whirled.
Music seeped into the street from a radio inside the café and a beggar approached Nicolette but DJ drove him away with a torrent of abuse. A waiter came to refill their cups. Nicolette saw Jean-Paul on the other side of the square come towards them; he saw her looking his way and waved. She watched the boy in the Jaws t-shirt steal some apples from a stall and run to a barefooted little girl. A dog howled. She zoomed in on the two children. The girl put a hand out for the fruit, but the boy spat on his hand and cleaned her face before giving her an apple. Nicolette pressed the shutter.
A horrific roar ripped through the square. The ground shuddered. A rolling, shimmering wave of hot air surged outwards in every direction, tearing bodies, shattering stalls, splitting the square into a kaleidoscope of still images, knocking Nicolette to the ground. The window of the café shattered. The surge of air stopped and reversed, feeding the thick cloud of black smoke rising from where there had been a shop. Next to Nicolette lay the old man from the next table, his glasses still on the tip of his nose. He twitched as if shocked by an electric current then lay still. Pieces of cloth and paper swirled upwards.
An instant of surreal silence.
A sudden shower of dust, rocks and glass.
Screams.
Steven pulled Nicolette to her feet and dragged her into the café. She caught a glimpse of DJ grabbing the camera bags and following. They sheltered amongst other customers behind a counter strewn with spilled food and coffee. DJ crashed in beside her and said something, and Nicolette realised she couldn’t hear him. She pressed her fingers to her ears and swallowed until her hearing returned to normal.
‘What the hell?’
‘Fucking bomb. Everyone okay?’
Nicolette nodded, too shocked to speak. She had lost control of her muscles, couldn’t even lift her hand from the floor to her lap. DJ took his camera from his bag and headed for the entrance of the café.
‘Give it a minute, mate. Might be another one.’
; DJ considered, came back to sit with them on the floor, his back against the counter. Outside, a woman keened. One of the customers crouching beside Nicolette stood, hesitated a moment, then left. Others followed. DJ pulled a joint out of the pocket of his jacket and lit it, drawing deep, holding it. Slowly exhaled. Drew again. Passed it to Nicolette.
‘You’ve got to be kidding. Are you out of your mind?’
‘What?’
‘A bloody bomb just went off!’
‘Yeah, I know that.’
‘A bomb went off. We could all be dead by now. And you light up a fucking joint?’
‘Best time, if you ask me.’
Nicolette stared at DJ, mouth opened, disbelieving. Steven smiled and took the joint from DJ’s fingers. Took a long drag. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and headed out into the square.
The air was jaundiced, dust and panic laden. Across the square a building burned. In the middle of the road a toddler stood alone, crying, his screams silenced by the shouting around him. DJ and Steven were already in the centre of it all, but Nicolette stood and stared, shivering – a movie being played in slow motion. She saw Jean-Paul across the square, covered in dust but safe. A boy bumped into her as he ran past, jerking her out of her daze. She ran across the square.
A woman lay across a fruit and vegetable stall, arm and fingers outstretched as if trying to snatch the orange just beyond her grasp. Her eyes were open, her features peaceful as her exposed intestines steamed in the cold air. Nicolette moved around behind the stall and squatted, so that her lens was level with the woman’s hand. She focused on it and on the oranges before it, filling two thirds of the viewfinder. The woman’s face and body behind it were foreshortened, slightly blurred. Nicolette pressed the shutter. Looked down to see a dog licking the blood dripping from the woman’s intestines onto the ground. She picked up an orange and threw it at the dog. Moved towards the burning building, motor drive whirling, and photographed an old couple standing over the body of a young woman, the old man half collapsed in his wife’s arms, crying. She, stone faced, stared straight ahead. When Nicolette lowered her camera, her gaze met the old woman’s. She turned away, shaken. Saw Steven tying a bandana around someone’s leg.
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