What the day owes the nigth

by Yasmina Khadra

  I was desperate to get back to Río Salado.

  After the funeral, Germaine gave me some money so that I could go to Jenane Jato, and asked her nephew Bertrand to go with me so he could bring me back safe and sound.

  Jenane Jato looked different, larger. It sprawled now towards Petit Lac, towards the shanty towns and the camp grounds of the nomads. Scrubland was fast disappearing under the advancing concrete. Patches of waste ground and dark alleys were now building sites. The high walls of a barracks or a prison rose up where once the souk had been. Crowds milled outside employment ‘offices’ – most of which were no more than tables set up in front of vast mountains of scrap iron. Jenane Jato was different, yet poverty still clung tenaciously to the place, resistant to even the most fervent municipal projects. The same shambling shadows still hugged the walls, the same human wrecks still sprawled drunkenly in cardboard boxes; the destitute, faces ashen, shrouded like mummies in their burnous, still teemed around the filthy cafés, hoping to dip a dry crust into the smells of cooking. The poor, the drunken and the wretched stared at us as though we were time itself, as though we had appeared from some parallel universe. Whenever he heard some insult directed at us, or saw someone stare a little too long at our fine clothes, Bertrand, who had never seen a place like Jenane Jato, walked a little faster. There were roumis here and there, and some Muslims who wore European suits, fezzes perched at rakish angles, but in the air there was still the stifling smell of a storm about to break. As we walked, we happened on squabbles, some of which degenerated into brawls while others simply petered out into uneasy silence. The sense of dread was overpowering. Even the jingling dance of the water sellers, whose leather harnesses were studded with tiny bells, could not ward off the unwholesome effects.

  There was far too much suffering.

  Jenane Jato was crumbling beneath the weight of broken dreams. Abandoned children stumbled in their parents’ shadows, weak from starvation and sunstroke, fledgling tragedies set loose upon the world. Feral and brutish, they raced barefoot through the streets, hanging on to the backs of trucks, dashing between the carts, laughing, heedless, flirting with death. Gangs of boys fought, or played soccer with a ball of knotted rags. In their terrifying games, there was something exhilarating, something dizzyingly suicidal.

  ‘Makes a change from Río Salado, doesn’t it?’ Bertrand tried to smile, but he was sweating and pale with fear. I was scared too, but my terror vanished when I saw Peg-Leg standing outside his stall. The poor devil had lost a lot of weight. He looked ten years older. He gave me the same puzzled frown he had the last time he had seen me – half surprise, half delight.

  ‘Can you give me the address of your guardian angel, blue eyes?’ he shouted. ‘Because if there is a God, I want to know why he looks out for you and not for us lot here.’

  ‘That’s enough of your blasphemy,’ called the barber. ‘It’s probably your ugly mug that made God turn his back on us.’

  The barber had not changed, though he now had the scar of a razor slash across his face. Jenane Jato was clearly on the move, but where it was headed I could not tell. The shacks behind the jujube hedges had been cleared away to leave a vast expanse of red clay surrounded by a wire fence into which had been dug the foundations for a bridge that was to span the railway line. Where the old barracks had stood rose the towers of a huge new factory.

  Peg-Leg jerked a thumb at his jar of sweets.

  ‘You want one, kid?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Crouched beneath a rotting lamp post, a waffle-seller clicked a pair of metal castanets. He offered us waffles in paper cornets and the gleam in his eyes sent shivers down our backs. Bertrand urged me on, clearly not prepared to trust a face or a shadow in this place.

  When we came to the courtyard, he said, ‘I’ll wait for you outside. Take all the time you need.’

  Opposite, where Ouari’s chicken coop had once been, there was a new brick house with a low stone wall that ran along what had been the patch of waste ground where a gang of boys had once tried to lynch me. I thought about Ouari, remembered him teaching me to catch goldfinches; I wondered where he was now.

  Badra peered at me when she saw me step into the courtyard. She was hanging out her washing, the hem of her dress tucked into the rainbow-coloured cord she used as a belt, revealing her bare legs. She stood, feet apart, hands on her broad hips, barring my way.

  ‘So it’s only now that you remember you have a family?’ Badra looked different. She had put on weight. Her strong face had slipped to join a double chin, her fearsome energy had waned and she now seemed flabby and listless.

  I didn’t know whether she was teasing or scolding me.

  ‘Your mother and your sister are out.’ She nodded to our curtained room. ‘But they should be back soon.’

  She pushed her laundry pail aside with her foot and shoved a stool towards me

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Kids! You’re all the same! You suckle till you’ve sucked us dry, and as soon as you learn to walk, you clear off and leave us to starve. You’re just like your fathers; you creep out and you don’t give a thought to what happens to us.’

  She turned and went back to hanging out her laundry. I could see only her shoulders rising and falling. She stopped for a moment to wipe her nose or brush away a tear, shook her head then went back to hanging clothes on the old hemp washing line that bisected the courtyard.

  ‘Your mother’s not been well,’ she said. ‘Not well at all. I’m sure something terrible has happened to your father, but she won’t believe it. Lots of men walk out on their families, they go away and start again somewhere. But that’s not the only possibility . . . There’s a lot of violence these days. I’ve got a bad feeling about your father. I think he was murdered and dumped in a ditch. He was a good man, not the kind of man who walks out on his kids. I’m sure he’s dead. Like my poor husband. Cut down for three soldies – three lousy cents. In broad daylight they killed him – stabbed him in the middle of the street. A single stab and it was all over. How can it be so easy for a man to die when he has hungry mouths to feed? How could he let himself be stabbed in the back by a kid not much older than you are?’

  Badra chattered on, never pausing for breath, as though someone had opened up a Pandora’s box inside her. It was as though this was all there was left for her: to talk about her tragedies, a casual gesture here, a sudden silence there. Above the clothes she was hanging out I could see her shoulders; beneath them, her bare legs, and sometimes, in the gap between the clothes, a glimpse of her plump hips. She told me that Bliss had evicted the beautiful Hadda, with her two kids trailing after her and nothing but a bundle of clothes. She told me that one night, when her drunken husband beat her yet again, poor Yezza had thrown herself into the well and killed herself. She told me how Batoul, the psychic, who had managed to extort a tidy sum from the poor wretches who came to consult her, finally amassed enough to buy a house and a Turkish hammam in the Village Nègre, and she told me about the new tenant who had shown up from God knew where and, in the afternoon, when all the shutters were closed, admitted every kind of deviant into her room. Badra told me that Bliss, now there were no men living in the courtyard, had become a pimp.

  When she had finished hanging out her washing, she tipped the dirty water into the drain, untucked the hem of her skirt from her belt, and went back into her dingy rat hole, where she continued to rail and curse until my mother came back.

  My mother did not seem surprised to see me sitting there on a stool in the courtyard. She barely seemed to recognise me. When I went over to kiss her, she took a step back. It was only when I pressed myself to her that her arms – hesitating for an instant – finally wrapped themselves around me.

  ‘Why did you come?’ she asked me over and over.

  I proffered the money Germaine had given me. Hardly had I held it out than, like lightning, my mother had whipped the few grubby banknotes from my hand and conjured them away like a magician. She pushed me
into the poky little room where we had lived, and as soon as we were safe, took the money out and counted it over and over to assure herself she wasn’t dreaming. I was ashamed by her greed, ashamed of the unkempt hair she had clearly not brushed for ages, ashamed of the tattered haik draped like an old curtain round her shoulders, ashamed of the hunger and the pain that distorted her face, this woman who, once, had been as beautiful as the dawn.

  ‘It’s a lot of money,’ she said. ‘Did your uncle tell you to give it to me?’

  Fearing she might react the same way my father had, I lied:

  ‘I saved it up.’

  ‘Are you working?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve stopped going to school?’

  ‘I still go to school.’

  ‘I don’t want you to leave school. I want you to be educated and get a good job so you can live happily for the rest of your life. Do you understand? I don’t want your children to have to live like dogs.’

  Her eyes burned as she grabbed me by the shoulders.

  ‘Promise me, Younes, promise me that you’ll go to university like your uncle, that you’ll have a proper house and a proper job . . .’

  Her fingers dug into my shoulders until I thought they might break.

  ‘I promise . . . Where is Zahra?’

  Warily she took a step back. Then, remembering that I was her son and not some envious evil neighbour, she whispered:

  ‘She is learning a trade . . . She is going to be a seam-stress. I got her a post as an apprentice in a dressmaker’s shop in the New Town. I want her to make something of herself . . .’

  ‘Is she better?’

  ‘She was never sick and she wasn’t mad; she’s simply deaf and dumb. But she understands people and the senior dressmaker told me she’s a quick learner. She’s a good woman, the dressmaker. I work for her three days a week. I do the cleaning. Here or there, what’s the difference? Besides, you do what you have to to survive.’

  ‘Why don’t you come and live with us in Río Salado?’

  ‘No,’ she shrieked as though I had uttered some obscenity. ‘I can’t leave this place until your father comes back. Imagine if he came back and we weren’t here? How would he find us? We have no family, no friends in this terrible city. And besides, where is Río Salado? It would never occur to your father that we might leave Oran. No, I am staying right here until he comes.

  ‘But what if he’s dead?’

  She grabbed me by the throat and slammed my head against the wall.

  ‘You little fool! How dare you! Batoul the clairvoyant told me. She saw it in my palm and she saw signs on the water. Your father is safe and well. He’s making his fortune; when he is rich, he will come home. We will all live in a beautiful house with a veranda and a vegetable garden, and there will be a garage for our new car, and all the troubles of the past will be forgotten. Who knows, maybe we might go back and buy back the lands we were forced to sell.’

  All this she said quickly, very quickly, with a quaver in her voice and a curious gleam in her eye, as her hands sketched her impossible dreams on the air. Had I known that this was the last time we would ever speak, I might have believed her fantasies; might have stayed with her. But how could I have known?

  Once again it was she who urged me to leave; to go back to my adoptive parents.

  9

  THEY CALLED us ‘the pitchfork’. We were as inseparable as the tines of a fork.

  There was Jean-Christophe Lamy, a hulking giant at the age of sixteen. As the eldest of the group, he was the leader. His hair as blonde as a hayrick, he had a permanent smile. Every girl in Río Salado swooned over him, but ever since Isabelle Rucillio had provisionally agreed to make him her ‘fiancé’, he watched his step.

  Then there was Fabrice Scamaroni, two months younger than me, a boy who had his heart on his sleeve and his head in the clouds. His sole ambition was to be a writer. His mother, a young widow who was a little crazy, owned businesses in Río Salado and Oran. She lived by her own rules and was the only woman in the whole district to drive a car. The wagging tongues in Río Salado constantly gossiped about her, but Madame Scamaroni didn’t care. She was beautiful, rich, independent. What more was there?

  In the summer, we would pile into the back seat of her sturdy six-cylinder truck and she would drive us to the beach at Terga. After a swim, she would throw together a barbecue, stuffing us with black olives, lamb kebabs and sardines grilled over charcoal.

  Then there was Simon Benyamin. Simon, like me, was fifteen. He was a short, fat Jewish boy who loved tricks and practical jokes. He was jolly, a little cynical because he had been unlucky in love, but he could be endearing when he wanted to. He dreamed of working in the theatre or the movies. His family was not exactly popular in Río Salado. His father trailed bad luck in his wake. Every time he set up a business it went bust, which meant that he owed money to everyone, even the seasonal workers.

  Of the gang, Simon and I were closest. We lived a stone’s throw from each other, and every day he called for me and we would go and meet Jean-Christophe on the hill. The hilltop was our fort. We would meet under an ancient olive tree and look down at Río Salado shimmering at our feet. Fabrice was always last to show up, and always with a basket full of kosher sausage sandwiches, pickled peppers and fresh fruit. Together we would hang out there until late into the night, dreaming up improbable schemes and listening to Jean-Christophe talking about the tribulations he suffered at the hands of Isabelle Rucillio. Fabrice, for his part, drove us insane reciting poems and dysenteric prose strung together with words he had found in the dictionary.

  Sometimes we allowed other boys to join us. More often than not this meant the Sosa cousins: José, who shared a tiny garret with his mother and ate gazpacho for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and André – we called him Dédé – who was every inch the son of his father, the stern Jaime Jiménez Sosa, who owed one of the largest farms in the area. André was sometimes a bully, he could be brutal with the hired help but he was kind to his friends. Spoiled and precocious, he was capable of saying outrageous things, seemingly indifferent to who he hurt, but I could never stay angry with him for long. Despite the cruel, casual remarks he made about the Arabs, he was always considerate to me. He did not discriminate; I was invited to his house just as often as his other friends. Yet even in my presence he was capable of disparaging Muslims, as though this was simply how things were. His father ruled his estate like a feudal lord, keeping the countless Muslim families who worked for him packed in like cattle. Wearing a pith helmet and slapping at his boots with a riding crop, Jaime Jiménez Sosa IV was always up at first light and always last to bed. He worked his ‘galley slaves’ until they dropped, and God help the malingerers. He worshipped his vineyards, and any incursion on to his land he regarded as sacrilege. People said that he once killed a goat who dared to nibble on a vine leaf and shot at the flabbergasted shepherd for trying to save the animal.

  These were strange times.

  As for me, time marched on – I was becoming a man. I had grown almost twelve inches, and when I licked my lips, I could feel a little downy moustache.

  It was the summer of 1942, and we were on the beach, sunning ourselves. The sea was crystalline and the horizon so clear that you could see all the way to the Habibas Islands. Fabrice and I were lounging under a sunshade while Simon, wearing a pair of revolting shorts, was entertaining the crowd doing ridiculous dives, hoping his antics might impress some girl, but his Apache war cries simply terrified the children and irritated the old ladies slumped in their deckchairs. Jean-Christophe was posing, holding his stomach in, hands on his hips, showing off the perfect V of his torso. Nearby, the Sosa boys had set up a tent. André loved to put on airs. Whereas other people brought deckchairs to the beach, he brought a tent; if they showed up with a tent, he would turn up with a whole caravanserai. At the age of eighteen, he already owned two cars, including a convertible. This he would drive lazily through the streets of Oran, except when
it was time for siesta, when he would tear through Río Salado with an ear-splitting roar. Today, he could think of nothing better to do than mistreat his manservant Jelloul. He had already sent him back to the village three times in the blazing sun, the first time to get cigarettes, the second to get matches, and the third because Monsieur André had asked for Bastos cigarettes, not something that ‘a navvy might smoke’. The village was a fair distance and poor Jelloul was melting like an ice cube.

  Fabrice and I had watched the scene play out from the beginning. André knew that the way he treated his manservant annoyed us and took malicious pleasure in winding us up. As soon as Jelloul got back, he sent him off a fourth time to get a tin-opener. The servant, a timid boy, turned on his heel stoically and headed back up the embankment in the sweltering afternoon heat.

  ‘Give him a break, Dédé,’ José said.

  ‘It’s the only way to keep him on his toes,’ said André, clasping his hands behind his neck. ‘Give him a break, and next minute he’ll be snoring.’

  ‘It’s a hundred degrees out there,’ pleaded Fabrice. ‘The poor guy is only flesh and blood, he’ll get sunstroke.’

  José got to his feet to call Jelloul back. André grabbed his wrist and forced him to sit down again.

  ‘Leave it, José. You don’t have servants, you don’t know what it’s like . . . Arabs are like dogs, you have to beat them to get them to behave.’ Then, remembering that I was there, he corrected himself: ‘Well, some Arabs . . .’

  Suddenly realising just how offensive his remark had been, he leapt to his feet and raced down to the sea. We watched him dive in, throwing up great sheets of spray. There was an uncomfortable silence in the tent. José clenched his jaw, finding it difficult to contain himself. Fabrice closed the book he had been reading and glared at me.