What the day owes the nigth

by Yasmina Khadra

  ‘Nothing will happen between me and your daughter, madame.’

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Swear it.’

  ‘I swear.’

  She slumped on to the counter. A great weight had been lifted from her, yet she seemed crushed, and she took her head in her hands and sobbed.

  14

  ‘IT’S FOR you.’ Germaine waved the phone at me.

  ‘Are you angry with me?’ It was Fabrice.

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Has Simon done something to upset you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you and Jean-Christophe fallen out?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then why have you been avoiding us? You’ve been sulking at home for ages. We waited for you all day yesterday. You said you’d come over, and by the time we ate, everything was cold.’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘Come off it . . . it’s not like there’s an epidemic in the village, and don’t tell me your uncle is sick, because I’ve seen him walking in the orange groves every morning. He’s fit as a fiddle.’

  He cleared his throat and his voice was calmer now.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Jonas. You live down the road from me but it’s like you’ve disappeared off the face of the earth.’

  ‘I’ve been sorting out the shop. I have to get the accounts up to date, and there’s an inventory to do.’

  ‘Do you need a hand?’

  ‘No . . . it’s fine.’

  ‘Okay, if everything’s fine, I’ll expect you at my house for dinner tonight.’

  I didn’t have time to say no; he had already hung up. By the time he called for me at seven p.m., Simon was in a foul mood.

  ‘Can you believe it? All that work I put in, for nothing. Like an idiot, I got my figures wrong. I’m the only one who lost out. The way they explained it, everyone stood to make a profit, but when the delivery showed up, I’m the one who has to pay the difference out of my own pocket. I can’t believe I let myself get conned . . .’

  ‘That’s business, Simon.’

  Jean-Christophe was waiting for us a couple of blocks away. Dressed in his Sunday best, he was freshly shaven, hair plastered down with a thick layer of Brylcreem, holding a big bunch of flowers and looking as nervous as an actor in his first role.

  ‘I feel embarrassed now,’ said Simon. ‘What are me and Jonas going to look like, showing up empty-handed?’

  ‘They’re for Émilie,’ Jean-Christophe admitted.

  ‘Émilie’s coming?’ I said, disheartened.

  ‘Of course she’s coming,’ said Simon. ‘She and Fabrice hardly spend a minute apart. But what are you doing bringing her flowers, Chris? She’s somebody else’s girlfriend, and that somebody else happens to be Fabrice.’

  ‘All’s fair in love and war.’

  Simon frowned, shocked by Jean-Christophe’s comment.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  Jean-Christophe threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘Of course I’m not serious, it was a joke.’

  ‘Well it’s not remotely funny,’ said Simon, who was a stickler for points of principle.

  Madame Scamaroni had set out a table on the veranda. She met us at the door. Fabrice and his beloved were lounging in a pair of wicker chairs under a small arbour in the garden. Émilie looked stunning. She was wearing a simple gipsy skirt, her hair hung loose down her back and her shoulders were bare. She looked good enough to eat. I immediately felt ashamed and put the thought out of my mind.

  Jean-Christophe’s Adam’s apple was bobbing like a yoyo, and his tie had almost come undone. He offered the flowers he was carrying to Madame Scamaroni.

  ‘For you, madame.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Chris, you’re an angel.’

  ‘We all chipped in,’ Simon said, feeling jealous.

  ‘You did not,’ Jean-Christophe shot back.

  Everyone burst out laughing.

  Fabrice set down the manuscript he had been reading to Émilie and came over to greet us. He put his arms around me and hugged me a little hard. Over his shoulder, I saw Émilie’s eyes seeking mine. I heard Madame Cazenave’s voice in my head. Émilie is just a child. She is fickle. She can fall for a boy because of his laugh, do you understand? And I do not want her to fall for you. A wave of shame, worse than the first, meant that I did not hear what Fabrice whispered in my ear.

  All evening, while Simon told jokes and had everyone in stitches, in the face of Émilie’s insistent offensive, I beat a retreat. Not that she put her hand on my thigh this time; in fact she did she not even speak to me. She simply sat opposite me, and in doing so obscured the whole world.

  She was gracious. She pretended to be interested in the laughter and joking, but it was forced, she was just laughing to be polite. I watched as she fidgeted, plucked at her skirt, nervous and anxious like a frightened schoolgirl waiting to be called to the blackboard. Sometimes, when the others were falling about laughing, she would look over to see if I was laughing too. I only half heard the jokes. Like Émilie, I was only laughing to be polite; like her, my thoughts were on other things. I didn’t like what was going on in my head; thoughts blossoming like poisonous flowers . . . I had promised . . . I had sworn. Strangely, though my scruples caught in my throat, they did not choke me – I took a certain perverse pleasure in allowing myself to be tempted. Why did my promises, my vows suddenly mean so little to me? Time and again I tried to concentrate on Simon’s antics, but it was hopeless; I quickly found myself staring at Émilie again. I was enveloped in unearthly silence, which muffled the sounds of the night, the chatter on the veranda. I was suspended in a void and Émilie’s eyes were my only beacon. I couldn’t go on like this. What I was doing was treachery, it was a betrayal and I felt tainted. I had to leave, I had to go home as soon as possible. I was terrified Fabrice would realise what was happening. That was a thought I could not bear, any more than I could bear to look at Émilie. Every time her eyes met mine, they took away another fragment of my being; like ancient battlements worn by time, I was crumbling.

  While the others were distracted, I went into the living room and phoned Germaine. I asked her to call me back; ten minutes later she did so.

  ‘Who was that on the phone?’ Simon asked, seeing the look on my face as I came back out on to the veranda.

  ‘It was Germaine . . . my uncle isn’t well.’

  ‘Do you want me to drop you home?’ Fabrice asked.

  ‘No, it’s okay.’

  ‘Call me if it’s something serious.’

  I nodded and left as quickly as I could.

  Summer that year was sweltering, and the grape harvest was superb. The usual round of lavish balls was in full swing. Every morning we headed for the beach, and every night, by the light of hundreds of Chinese lanterns, there was a party. A dizzying succession of bands and orchestras played in the marquees and we danced until we could barely put one foot in front of the other. There were weddings and birthdays, civic celebrations and engagement parties. In Río Salado, a banquet could be something as simple as a makeshift barbecue, and we could conjure an imperial ballet from a twist of the gramophone.

  Half-heartedly I went to the parties and stayed for as short a time as possible. I was always the last to arrive, and often left so quickly no one realised I had come. Everyone was always there, and our gang would invariably be on the dance floor. I could not bring myself to interrupt Émilie and Fabrice during a slow dance; they looked so perfect together – although it seemed increasingly obvious that the relationship was one-sided. The eyes can lie, but the gaze cannot, and the glow in Émilie’s was fading fast. Whenever I was around, she would look at me imploringly. It was pointless to turn away, since her distress signals reached me loud and clear. Why me? I racked the depths of my brain. Why does she look at me like this and never say anything? Émilie’s beauty was matched only by the heartache that she tried to hide behind her radiant smile. She never betrayed wh
at she was feeling, willed herself to be happy with Fabrice, but she was not happy. At night, when they huddled together in the sand dunes and Fabrice talked to her about the night sky, she did not see the stars. Twice I had almost stumbled on them in the darkness, wrapped in each other’s arms on the beach, and though I could not see their faces, I knew that when Fabrice held her, Émilie was elsewhere.

  And then there were Jean-Christophe’s bouquets. He had never bought so many flowers. Every day he stopped by the florist on the village square and then went to the Scamaronis’ house. Simon took a dim view of his gallantry, but Jean-Christophe did not seem to care; it was as though he had lost all sense of judgement, all notion of propriety. In time, Fabrice began to notice that his dates with Émilie were often interrupted as Jean-Christophe became more brazen, more intrusive. At first he thought there was nothing to it, but finding that he rarely had a moment alone with Émilie, he began to wonder. Jean-Christophe barely let them out of his sight; it was as though he was watching their every move.

  Finally, the inevitable happened.

  It was a Sunday afternoon and we were all at the beach in Terga. Holidaymakers skipped across the scorching sand like grasshoppers and dived into the cool water. Simon was having his usual afternoon nap, having just wolfed down a string of merguez sausages and drunk a whole bottle of wine. His fat hairy belly rose and fell like a blacksmith’s bellows. Fabrice, however, was wide awake. A book lay at his feet, but he was not reading; he was watching Jean-Christophe and Émilie as they laughed and splashed in the waves, timing each other to see who could hold their breath longest, then swimming out to sea until they almost disappeared. As he watched them turn somersaults in the water, legs thrust above the waves, a sad smile played on Fabrice’s lips and doubts shimmered in his dark eyes. When they emerged from the waves, Émilie and Jean-Christophe, in a gesture that seemed to surprise them both, grabbed each other around the waist, and Fabrice’s face darkened as he watched his dreams and plans slip through his fingers.

  I hated that summer; the long months of confusion and heartache and increasing isolation, of lies and half-truths. Later, I came to call it ‘the dead season’, the title of Fabrice’s first novel, which began: When love betrays you, it is proof that you were undeserving; to be noble one must set it free – only if you are prepared to pay this price can you say that you have truly loved. Ever courageous, noble even in defeat, Fabrice kept on smiling, though his heart fluttered weakly in his chest like a caged bird.

  Simon was sickened by what was happening, by the hypocrisy and the duplicity. To him, Émilie’s betrayal was unforgivable. He could not understand how she could turn her back on Fabrice, who was gentle and unfailingly kind; who had given himself to her body and soul. But if Simon felt that Fabrice had been wronged, he did not blame Jean-Christophe – who was deeply depressed since his break-up with Isabelle, and seemingly unaware of how much he was hurting his best friend. To Simon, the blame clearly lay with Émilie, the ‘preying mantis’, an outsider who did not understand the ways or the principles of Río Salado.

  I tried not to get involved. I found excuses not to be with my friends, to avoid the dinners and the parties.

  Simon now despised Émilie and, like me, began to find excuses not to be with her. He and I would go to André’s diner and play pool all night.

  Fabrice left Río Salado for Oran, where he holed up in his mother’s apartment on the Boulevard des Chasseurs, working on newspaper articles and sketching out his first novel. He rarely set foot in the village. On the one occasion I went to see him in the city, he seemed resigned to his fate.

  Late that summer, Jean-Christophe invited Simon and me to his house, as he always did when he needed to make an important decision. He was hopelessly in love with Émilie, he told us, and intended to ask her to marry him. When he saw the look on Simon’s face, he quickly went on, desperate to convince us:

  ‘It’s like I’ve been reborn . . . After what I’ve been through,’ he said, referring to his break-up with Isabelle, ‘I needed a miracle, and the miracle happened. I’m telling you, this girl was sent to me by God.’

  Simon gave him a mocking smile.

  ‘What? You don’t believe me?’

  ‘I don’t have to believe you.’

  ‘So why are you laughing?’

  ‘I’m laughing because if I didn’t laugh I’d cry.’ Simon rose up in his seat, veins standing out on his neck. ‘I’m laughing to keep myself from being sick.’

  ‘Go on then,’ Jean-Christophe said. ‘Give me your two cents.’

  ‘Two cents? More like two million. Okay, you’re right, I don’t believe you. What’s more, I’m angry with you, I’m disgusted – the way you’ve treated Fabrice is despicable, it’s unforgivable.’

  Jean-Christophe accepted this; he knew he owed us an explanation. We were sitting in his living room. On the table stood a jug of lemonade and a jug of coconut water. The window to the street was open, the curtains billowed in the breeze and in the distance dogs barked, their yelps and growls echoing in the silent darkness.

  Jean-Christophe waited until Simon had sat down again, then, his hands trembling, he brought his glass to his lips and took a long drink. He set down the glass, wiped his mouth with a napkin and, not daring to look at us, began to speak in a slow, deliberate voice.

  ‘This isn’t about Fabrice, it’s about love. I didn’t steal anything, didn’t take anything from anyone. It was a thunderbolt – love at first sight – it happens all the time all over the world. That thunderbolt is a moment of grace, a blessing from the gods. I don’t feel despicable, and I don’t feel ashamed either. I’ve loved Émilie from the first time I saw her, and there’s nothing shameful about that. Fabrice has always been my friend. I’ve never been one for talking. I take things as they come.

  ‘I’m happy, for God’s sake.’ He banged his fists on the table. ‘Is it a crime to be happy?’ He turned angrily to Simon.

  ‘What’s wrong with loving someone and being loved? Émilie isn’t a thing – she’s not a painting you can buy in a gallery, she’s not a deal to be haggled over. She’s got the right to choose who she wants to be with . . . This is about two people sharing a life together, Simon! As it happens, Émilie feels about me the way I do about her. Where’s the shame in that?’

  Simon was not about to back down. Hands balled into fists, nostrils flaring, he glared at Jean-Christophe and, stressing every syllable, said:

  ‘If you’re so sure of your decision, why did you invite us? Why force Jonas and me to listen to your speeches if you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of? Are you trying to ease your conscience? Or were you hoping we’d give your sordid little affair our blessing?’

  ‘You’re wrong, Simon, I didn’t invite you here to ask for your blessing, or to try and convince you of anything. This is my life, and I’m old enough to know what I want . . . I plan to marry Émilie before Christmas. I don’t need advice; what I need is money.’

  Realising he had overstepped the mark, Simon leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. Jean-Christophe was right, he had no business questioning his decision.

  ‘Don’t you think you’re moving a bit fast?’

  ‘Do you think I’m taking things too fast, Jonas?’ Jean-Christophe turned to me.

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Are you sure she really loves you?’ Simon asked.

  ‘What makes you think that she doesn’t?’

  ‘She’s a city girl, Chris, she’s not like us. When I think of the way she dumped Fabrice—’

  ‘She didn’t dump Fabrice!’ shouted Jean-Christophe, infuriated.

  ‘Okay, I take it back . . . Have you talked to her about your plans?’

  ‘Not yet, but I’ll have to soon. The problem is, I’m broke. What money I had, I frittered away in bars and brothels in Oran after I broke up with Isabelle.

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Simon. ‘You’re only just over your break-up with Isabelle. You’re still not your old self. I t
hink this thing with Émilie is just an infatuation. I think you should wait a while, see how she feels. Don’t go putting a rope around your neck. I have to say, I thought maybe you were just trying to make Isabelle jealous.’

  ‘Isabelle is ancient history.’

  ‘No she’s not, Chris, you don’t get over someone just by clicking your fingers.’

  Offended by Simon’s remarks and my refusal to say anything, Jean-Christophe got to his feet, walked over to the door and slammed it open.

  ‘You’re throwing us out?’ said Simon indignantly.

  ‘Let’s just say I’ve heard enough. If you don’t want to lend me the money, Simon, that’s fine, but don’t lecture me, and for God’s sake don’t talk about things you don’t understand.’

  Jean-Christophe knew that this was unfair. He knew Simon would give him anything he asked. He was deliberately trying to upset him, and he succeeded, because Simon stormed out of the room. I had to run to catch up with him on the street.

  My uncle called me into his study and asked me to sit on the sofa where he liked to lie and read. He had regained much of his colour and put on some weight; he looked years younger. His fingers still trembled and his grip was weak, but there was a spark of life in his eyes again. I felt happy that the man I had so admired before the police raid in Oran was almost his old self again. He spent his time reading, writing; he smiled. I loved to see him walking arm in arm with Germaine, so intimate they barely registered the world around them. In the effortlessness of their relation ship, the ease of their conversation, there was a tenderness and an honesty that was almost sacred. They were the most honourable couple I had ever known. Though they needed nothing and no one to complete them, still, when I watched them, I felt inspired and filled with a joy as beautiful as their modest happiness. Their love demanded no compromise, it was perfect. According to sharia law, a non-Muslim must convert to Islam before marrying a Muslim. My uncle had not seen things that way. It did not matter to him whether his wife was a Christian or a kafir. If two people love each other, he told me, they need not fear excommunication, for love appeases God – it cannot be negotiated or compromised, for to do so is to dishonour something sacred.