What the day owes the nigth

by Yasmina Khadra

  I was beginning to get bored. Jean-Christophe disappeared with some fat old woman, followed by Joe leading two girls caked in make-up. André had vanished.

  The owner offered me a bowl of toasted almonds and promised that when I came of age I could have her prettiest girl.

  ‘No hard feelings, kid?’

  ‘No hard feelings, Madame.’

  ‘You’re sweet . . . and for God’s sake don’t call me Madame, it gives me constipation.’

  Calmer now, the woman was trying to make peace. I was terrified she might do me a ‘favour’ and allow me to choose from the sweaty flesh laid out on the bench.

  ‘Sure you’re not angry with me?’

  ‘I’m not, honestly,’ I yelped, now convinced she would overlook my age and pick out a girl for me. ‘Actually,’ I said quickly, to cover every eventuality, ‘I didn’t want to come in the first place. I’m not ready.’

  ‘You’re right, kid. When it comes to dealing with women, you’re never ready . . . There’s lemonade behind you if you’re thirsty. It’s on the house.’

  She left me and disappeared into the corridor to make sure everything was okay.

  It was then that I saw her. She had just finished with a client and gone back to sit with her co-workers on the bench. Her arrival created a ripple in the waiting room. One burly soldier loudly announced that he was first in the queue, causing a storm of protests. I paid no attention. Suddenly the noise in the room seemed to die away; even the room had vanished. There was only her. It was as if a shooting star had come from nowhere and traced a halo of light around her. I recognised her at once, though this was the last place I would have expected to see her. She did not seem to have aged at all. Her body, in a tight-fitting, lowcut dress, was still that of an adolescent girl, her hair spilled over her shoulders just as I remembered it, her cheekbones were as perfectly chiselled as ever. It was Hadda . . . Hadda the beautiful, the woman I had secretly loved, the object of my first boyish fantasies. How could Hadda, who simply by stepping into the courtyard of our house lit it up like the sun, have wound up in this seedy dive?

  I was shocked, frozen with disbelief.

  Seeing her, I was suddenly transported back to a morning several years before. I was sitting in the courtyard outside our tiny room in Jenane Jato, listening to the laughter and the chatter of our neighbours, the squealing of their children. Hadda was not laughing. She was sad. I remembered watching her place her hand on the low table, palm upwards, and say: ‘Tell me what you see, Batoul, I need to know. I can’t go on like this,’ and Batoul saying, ‘I see you surrounded by many men, Hadda. But there is little happiness . . . It looks like a dream, yet it is not a dream.’

  Batoul had been right. Hadda was surrounded by many men, but there was little joy. This place where she had washed up, with its sequins and spangles, its subdued lighting and extravagant decor, was dream-like, yet it was not a dream. I stood behind the counter, open-mouthed, unable to give voice to the terrible feeling that crept over me like a fog and made me feel as though I might go mad.

  The burly soldier with the shaven head grabbed two men and smashed their heads against the wall. After that, things calmed down somewhat. He glared around him, nostrils flaring, and when he realised that no one else was prepared to take him on, let go of the two men and strode over to Hadda, grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her to her feet. In the silence as they walked down the corridor, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.

  I rushed out into the street, choking for breath.

  André, Jean-Christophe and Joe found me sitting, dumbstruck, on a step, and assuming it was because the madame had refused to let me in, they asked no questions. Jean-Christophe was crimson with embarrassment. Things, apparently, had not gone well. André had eyes only for his Yank, and seemed prepared to grant his every wish. He suggested to Jean-Christophe and me that we go and find Simon and Fabrice and meet up later at the Majestic, one of the most fashionable brasseries in the new town.

  The six of us spent the rest of the evening in a high-class restaurant at André’s expense. Joe could not hold his wine. After we had eaten, he started acting up. It started with him pestering a journalist who was quietly trying to put the finishing touches to a story. Joe wandered over to tell the man about his exploits – how he had fought at the front, how many times he had risked his life. The journalist, a patient, polite man, heard him out, clearly eager to get back to his work, irritated but too shy to say anything. He was visibly relieved when André went to collect his soldier friend. Joe came back and joined us, but he was restless and volatile. From time to time he turned back to the journalist and bellowed across the tables: ‘I want a big headline, John, I want to see my face on the front page. You need a photo, it’s no problem, okay, John? I’m counting on you.’ Realising he had no hope of finishing his story with this lunatic nearby, the journalist picked up his rough draft, dropped some money on the table and left.

  ‘You know who that is?’ Joe said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. ‘That’s John Steinbeck. He’s a writer, a war correspondent with the Herald Tribune. He wrote a piece about my regiment.’

  After the journalist had left, Joe looked for other prey. He went up to the bar and asked them to play some Glenn Miller. Then he climbed on to his chair, stood at attention, and sang ‘Home on the Range’. Later, egged on by a bunch of Americans having dinner on the terrace, he forced one of the waiters to repeat after him the lyrics to ‘You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To’. Gradually, the laughter faded to smiles and the smiles to frowns and people began to ask André to take his Yank elsewhere. Joe was no longer the biddable young man he had been during the day. He was drunk now. His eyes bloodshot, his lips flecked with spittle, he clambered up on the table and began to tap-dance, sending cutlery and crockery flying and glasses and bottles crashing to the floor. The manager came over and politely asked him to stop, but Joe, who did not take kindly to the request, punched the man in the face. Two waiters rushed to help their boss and were immediately sent flying. Women started crying. André grabbed his protégé, begging him to calm down, but Joe was no longer listening. He lashed out in all directions and the brawl spread to other customers, then the soldiers on the terrace waded in and chairs started flying. It was chaos.

  It took a number of officers from the military police to overpower Joe, and the restaurant did not begin to relax until the MP’s jeep disappeared into the night with Joe inside.

  Back in our room on the Boulevard des Chasseurs, I couldn’t get to sleep. All night I tossed and turned, unable to get the image of Hadda the prostitute out of my mind. Batoul’s voice echoed in my head, stirring up old fears, unearthing silences buried deep within me. It was as though I had seen a glimpse of some terrible catastrophe that would befall me. I buried my head under the pillow, trying to suffocate myself with it, but it was useless: the image of Hadda sitting half naked in that brothel turned and turned in my head like a dancer on a music box to the voice of Batoul the clairvoyant.

  The following morning, I asked Fabrice to lend me some money, and I headed off on my own to Jenane Jato. This was the other side of Oran; no uniformed soldiers strutted about the streets here, and the air was filled with the stench of rotting prayers and hopes. I needed to see my mother and my sister, wanted to touch them with my own hands, hoping I might shake off the terrible sense of foreboding that had hounded me all night, that clung to me still . . .

  But my terrible fears were proved right. Jenane Jato had changed since my last visit. The courtyard where we had lived stood empty; it looked as though a tornado had swept through and carried everyone off. There was barbed wire across the doorway, but someone had made a hole in it large enough for me to crawl through. The courtyard was filled with blackened rubble, rats’ dropping and cat shit. The metal cover of the well was warped and twisted. The doors and windows were all gone. Fire had gutted the left-hand side of the building; the walls had collapsed. A few charred beams still hung from the roof. Above them there
was only the pitiless blue of the sky. Our tiny room lay in ruins, and here and there amid the rubble were broken kitchen implements and half-charred bundles of clothes.

  ‘There’s no one there.’ A voice rang out behind me.

  It was Peg-Leg, propped against the doorway, wearing a gandurah that was too short for him. His face was gaunt, his toothless mouth gaped, a terrible maw his grey beard did little to hide. His arm was trembling and he was having trouble standing on his one good leg, which was pale now and covered with brownish pustules.

  ‘What happened here?’ I asked him.

  ‘Terrible things . . .’

  He hobbled over to me, picking up a can as he passed. He turned it over to see if there might be anything inside worth salvaging, then threw it over his shoulder.

  ‘Look at this mess.’ He flung his arm wide. ‘It’s a terrible shame.’

  Seeing me standing there, waiting, he went on:

  ‘I warned Bliss about it. This is a respectable house, I told him, you’ve no business putting that whore in with decent women; it’ll end in tears. But he wouldn’t listen to me. One night, a couple of drunks came round looking for her, but she already had a customer, so they tried their luck with Badra. You can imagine – they never knew what hit them. The widow’s two sons butchered them. After that, it was the whore’s turn. She defended herself better than her clients, but there were two of them. At some point, someone knocked over the oil lamp and the fire spread like lightning. It’s lucky it didn’t reach the other houses. The police arrested Badra and her sons and boarded up the house; it’s been like this for two years now. Some people say it’s haunted.’

  ‘What happened my mother?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I do know that she survived the fire; I saw her with your little sister the next day on the corner of the street. They weren’t injured.’

  ‘What about Bliss?’

  ‘He disappeared.’

  ‘What about the other tenants? Maybe they know something . . .’

  ‘I don’t know where they went, sorry.’

  I made my way back to the Boulevard des Chasseurs with a heavy heart. My friends pestered me to know where I’d been, but their questions simply infuriated me and I went out again and wandered the streets for hours. Again and again I found myself standing in the middle of a street, my head in my hands, trying to compose myself. My mother and my sister were safe, I told myself, and probably better off now than they had been. Batoul the psychic was never wrong – after all, she had predicted Hadda’s fate. My father would come back – it was written on the ripples of the water. My mother would not have to worry any more.

  This was what I was thinking when suddenly I saw him . . .

  My father!

  I was sure it was him – I could have recognised his shadow in the darkness among ten thousand, among a hundred thousand men. It was my father. He had come back. Bent beneath the weight of a thick green coat he was wearing in spite of the heat, he was crossing a crowded square in the Village Nègre. I rushed to catch up with him, pushing through the crowded square, but it seemed that for every step forward, I was pushed two steps back. Not for a moment did I take my eyes off the figure of my father as he shambled away, limping slightly, bowed beneath the weight of his green jacket. I was terrified that if I lost sight of him, I might never find him again. But by the time I finally struggled free of the crowd and made it to the far side of the square, he had vanished.

  I looked for him in the local cafés, in the bars, in the hammams . . . but he was gone.

  I never saw my mother or my sister again. I do not know what became of them, whether they are alive still or dust mingled with the dust of ages. My father I saw several times. About once every ten years I would spot him in a crowded souk or on a building site; sometimes standing alone on his own, or in the doorway of an abandoned warehouse. I never managed to speak to him. Once, I followed him into a blind alley, certain that at last I had tracked him down, and was shocked to discover that the alley was deserted, there was no one waiting at the foot of the crumbling wall. Only when I realised that he always wore the same green jacket, which seemed to be untouched by time and weather, did I finally understand that the man I saw was not flesh and blood.

  Even now, in my declining years, I still see him in the distance sometimes, bowed beneath the weight of his old green jacket, limping slowly towards his doom.

  10

  THE SEA looked smooth enough to walk on; not a wave lapped at the beach, not a ripple disturbed the glassy surface. It was a weekday and the beach belonged to us. Next to me, Fabrice lay on his back dozing, a book open over his face. Jean-Christophe was strutting along the water’s edge, showing off as always. The Sosa cousins, André and José, had set up a tent and a barbecue a hundred metres away and were waiting for the girls from Lourmel. Here and there a few families lay sunning themselves along the shore. Were it not for Simon’s antics, we might have been on a desert island.

  The sun poured down like molten lead, and seagulls darted across the flawless sky, drunk on space and freedom. From time to time they skimmed the waves, like planes chasing each other and hedge-hopping, only to soar again to melt into the blue. In the distance, a trawler heading for port trailed a cloud of birds in its wake; it had been a good day’s fishing.

  The weather was beautiful.

  Sitting beneath a parasol, a woman gazed out at the horizon. She wore a broad-brimmed hat with a red ribbon, dark glasses and a white swimsuit that clung to her tanned body like a second skin.

  And there would be no more to tell had it not been for a gust of wind.

  Had I known that a gust of wind can change the course of a life, I might have been more wary, but at the age of seventeen, we all believe we are invulnerable . . .

  The midday breeze had come up and the fateful gust of wind, waiting in ambush, raced along the beach stirring up eddies of sand, whipping the parasol into the air as the lady clutched her hat to stop it from flying away. The parasol pirouetted through the air, sailed along the sand, turned somersaults. Jean-Christophe tried but failed to catch it. If he had, my life would have gone on as before, but fate decreed otherwise. The parasol landed at my feet. I simply reached out and picked it up.

  Smiling, the lady watched me as I made my way towards her with the parasol tucked under one arm. She got to her feet.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t mention it, madame.’

  I knelt down beside her and began scooping out sand, making the hole where the parasol had been deeper and wider. Then I replanted the parasol, and trampled the sand to make sure it did not fly off again.

  ‘You are very kind, Monsieur Jonas,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry . . .’ she added quickly. ‘I heard your friends call you that.’

  She took off her dark glasses.

  ‘Are you from Terga?’

  ‘From Río Salado, madame.’

  Her piercing eyes unsettled me. In the distance I could see my friends giggling and laughing at me. I quickly took my leave of the woman and went back to join them.

  ‘You’re red as a beetroot,’ Jean-Christophe teased me.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I said.

  Simon, who had just come back from a swim, was rubbing himself vigorously with a towel, a mischievous smile on his lips. He dropped into my chair and said:

  ‘So what did Madame Cazenave want with you?’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Of course I know her. Her husband was governor of a penal colony in Guyana. They say he disappeared in the jungle tracking a couple of escaped prisoners. When he didn’t show up, she decided to come home. She’s a good friend of my aunt. My aunt says she thinks Madame Cazenave’s husband succumbed to the charms of some big-bottomed Amazonian beauty and ran off with her.’

  ‘I’m glad your aunt’s no friend of mine!’

  Simon burst out laughing and threw the towel at my face, beat his chest like a gorilla and, with a shrill war cry, raced back down to the sea.

&n
bsp; ‘Completely mad,’ sighed Fabrice, propping himself up on one elbow to watch Simon perform some ridiculous dive.

  The girls André had been waiting for arrived on the stroke of ten. The youngest was at least four or five years older than André and José. The girls kissed the Sosa cousins on both cheeks and settled themselves in canvas chairs. André’s manservant, Jelloul, busied himself at the barbecue, fanning the coals and sending clouds of white smoke across the surrounding dunes. José pulled a hamper from under the piles of bags around the centre pole of the tent, took out a couple of strings of spicy merguez sausages and laid them on the grill. The smell of burning fat began to drift along the beach.

  I don’t remember why I decided to head over to André’s tent. Perhaps I was deliberately trying to attract the attention of Madame Cazenave so that I could get another glimpse of her magnificent eyes. If so, she was reading my mind, because as I passed her, she took off her sunglasses, and as she did, I suddenly felt as though I was wading through quicksand.

  I saw her again some days later on the main street in Río Salado. She was coming out of a shop, a white hat perched like a crown over her perfect face. People turned to look at her but she did not even notice. She had an aristocratic bearing and did not walk but strode along the avenue to the rhythm of time itself. She reminded me of the enigmatic heroines of the silver screen, who seemed so real that next to them our reality paled into insignificance.

  She glided past as I sat with Simon Benyamin on the terrace of a café on the square. She did not even see me. My only consolation was the cloud of perfume that trailed in her wake.

  ‘Easy does it,’ whispered Simon.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take a look in the mirror! You’re red as a beetroot! Don’t tell me you’re in love with a respectable housewife and mother?’