He set his pen back in the inkwell and looked at me pensively.
‘What’s the matter, son?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Germaine thinks there is something bothering you.’
‘I can’t think of anything. I haven’t said anything.’
‘Sometimes, when we think our problems only concern ourselves, we don’t talk about them . . . I just want you to know that you are not alone, Younes, that you can talk to me any time. Never think that you might be disturbing me. You are the person I love most in all the world. You are my future. You are at an age when young men have great concerns. You’re thinking of marrying, of having a home of your own, of earning a living. That’s normal. Every bird yearns to fly on his own wings.’
‘Germaine is talking nonsense.’
‘That’s not a bad thing. You know how much she loves you. Her every prayer is for you. Don’t hide things from her. If you need money, if you need anything at all, we are here for you.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘I’m glad.’
Before he let me go, he picked up his pen, scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to me.
‘Could you go to the bookshop and pick this up for me?’
‘Of course. I’ll go now.’
I slipped the piece of paper into my pocket and headed out, wondering what could have made Germaine think that I was worried.
The sweltering heat of recent weeks had calmed somewhat. In a sky exhausted by the heatwave, a big cloud ravelled its wool, using the sun as its spinning wheel, its shadow gliding over the vineyards like a ghost ship. Old men began to emerge from their shacks, relieved to have survived the heat; they sat on their stools in shorts and sweat-soaked shirts, eating lunch, their red faces half hidden by their broad-brimmed hats. It was almost dark; the breeze from the coast was cool and gentle. I touched the scrap of paper in my pocket and headed for the bookshop. The shop window was groaning with books and crude watercolours by local amateurs. When I pushed open the door, I was shocked to see Émilie standing behind the counter.
‘Hello,’ she said, taken aback.
For several seconds I forgot why I had come. My heart hammered like a demented blacksmith on his anvil.
‘Madame Lambert hasn’t been well,’ she explained. ‘She asked me to fill in for her.’
My hand rummaged for a moment before finding the piece of paper at the bottom of my pocket.
‘Can I help you?’
Speechless, I simply handed her the piece of paper.
‘The Plague, by Albert Camus,’ she read, ‘published by Gallimard.’
She nodded and hurried off behind the bookshelves, while I tried to catch my breath. I could hear her pushing a stepladder, searching along the shelves, repeating: ‘Camus . . . Camus . . .’, climbing down from the stepladder, pushing it down the aisle, then crying:
‘Ah, here it is . . .’
She reappeared, her eyes more vast than a prairie.
‘It was right under my nose,’ she said, increasingly bewildered.
As I took the book, my hand grazed hers and I felt a spark thrill through me just as I had in the restaurant in Oran when she made a pass at me under the table. I looked at her and her face was flushed, but I knew it was a mirror image of my own.
‘How is your uncle?’ she asked, still blushing.
I didn’t understand what she meant.
‘You seemed worried that night at Fabrice’s house . . .’
‘Oh . . . yes, yes . . . No, he’s much better now.’
‘I hope it wasn’t serious.’
‘No, it wasn’t serious.’
‘I was really worried when you left.’
‘It was just a scare . . .’
‘I was worried about you, Monsieur Jonas, you were so pale.’
‘Oh me . . . you know . . .’
She was no longer blushing now, she was in control, and her eyes held mine, determined not to let go.
‘It was a pity you had to leave. I’ve barely had a chance to talk to you. You don’t say much.’
‘I’m shy.’
‘I’m shy too. It can be so exhausting. And we miss out on so much. After you left, I was bored.’
‘Simon seemed to be having fun . . .’
‘I wasn’t.’
Her hand slipped from the book on to my wrist and I quickly jerked it away.
‘What are you afraid of, Monsieur Jonas?’
Her voice! Now the quavering had stopped, it had gained in confidence; it was clear, powerful, as commanding as her mother’s.
Her hand took mine again; I did nothing to stop her.
‘I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while now, Monsieur Jonas, but you always seem to disappear. Why are you avoiding me?’
‘I’m not avoiding you . . .’
‘That’s not true, I can tell. When people try to lie there are little things that betray the truth. I would so like us to spend some time together, Monsieur Jonas. I think we have a lot in common, don’t you?
‘I . . .’
‘We could meet up, if you like.’
‘I’m busy at the moment.’
‘I need to speak to you in private.’
‘What about?’
‘This isn’t the time or the place . . . Why don’t you come to my house. It’s out on the marabout road. It won’t take long, I promise.’
‘But I don’t know what we have to talk about. Besides, Jean-Christophe . . .’
‘What about Jean-Christophe?’
‘This is a small town, mademoiselle, people talk. Jean-Christophe might not appreciate . . .’
‘Might not appreciate what? We’re not doing anything wrong. Besides, what business is it of his? Jean-Christophe is a friend, there’s nothing between us.’
‘Don’t say that, please. He is in love with you.’
‘Jean-Christophe is a lovely person, I like him . . . but I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life with him.’
I was shocked.
Her eyes glittered like the blade of a scimitar.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Monsieur Jonas. I’m telling the truth. There is nothing between us.’
‘Everyone in the village thinks you’re engaged.’
‘Then they’re mistaken . . . Jean-Christophe is a friend, nothing more. My heart belongs to someone else,’ she said, and pressed my hand to her breast.
‘Bravo!’
The voice was like an explosion. Émilie and I froze: in the doorway of the bookshop stood Jean-Christophe, holding a bouquet of flowers. I could feel his hatred like scalding lava. He stood, appalled, incredulous, trembling beneath the ruins of the sky that had fallen. Face distorted with rage, he struggled to express his fury.
‘Bravo!’ he said again, then threw the flowers on the floor and stamped on them. ‘I bought these roses for the woman I love. It turns out they’re a funeral wreath. I’ve been so stupid . . . and you, Jonas, you are an utter bastard!’
He raced out, slamming the glass door so hard it cracked, and I rushed after him. He zigzagged wildly through the side streets, lashing out at everything in his path. Seeing me behind him, he turned and pointed an accusing finger.
‘Stay where you are, Jonas, don’t come near me or I swear I’ll kill you.’
‘You’re making a mistake. There’s nothing between me and Émilie, I swear.’
‘Go to hell, and take her with you! You’re a bastard, a fucking bastard!’
Furious, he rushed at me and slammed me against the wall, spraying spittle in my face as he screamed insults at me. He punched me hard in the stomach. I fell to my knees.
‘Why do you have to ruin my happiness?’ He was close to tears, his eyes bloodshot, his lips flecked with spittle. ‘Why, for God’s sake, why did you have to ruin everything?’
He kicked me in the side.
‘Curse you, and curse the day I ever met you,’ he shouted, running off. ‘I never want to see you again, I never want to hea
r your name, you miserable two-faced bastard!’
I lay on the ground, unsure which was worse, the pain from the beating, or my heartache.
Jean-Christophe did not go home. André had spotted him running across the fields after our argument, but no one had seen him since. Days passed. Jean-Christophe’s parents were sick with worry; their son had never disappeared without letting them know where he was. He had gone away after his break-up with Isabelle, but he had phoned his mother every night so that she would not worry. Simon came to see me to ask what had happened. He was clearly worried – Jean-Christophe had just recovered from a serious depression; he might not survive a relapse. I feared the worst too. I could not sleep for thinking about what might have happened. Sometimes I would get up, fetch a jug of water, and drink it as I paced up and down the balcony. I didn’t want to talk about what had gone on in the bookshop. I felt ashamed; I tried to pretend it had never happened.
‘I’m sure that bitch did something to upset him,’ Simon growled. ‘I’d swear to it. That little pricktease has something to do with this.’
I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye.
After a week of phoning Jean-Christophe’s friends in Oran and making discreet enquiries in Río Salado, his father finally called the police.
When he heard about Jean-Christophe’s disappearance, Fabrice rushed back to Río Salado.
‘What the hell happened?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Simon told him.
The three of us set off for Oran and combed the brothels and the bars, the sordid fondouks in La Scalera where for a few francs you could hole up with the ageing whores, drinking cheap wine and smoking opium. There was no sign of Jean-Christophe. We showed his photograph to the brothel madams, the barmen and the bouncers at the cabarets, to the moutchos in the hammams, but no one had seen him. Nor was there any news of him at the hospitals and the police stations.
Émilie came to see me at the pharmacy. My first thought was to throw her out. Madame Cazenave had been right: nothing good could come of my relationship with her daughter; when I looked into her eyes, a horde of demons was set loose. And yet when she stepped into the shop, all my anger drained away. I had felt she was to blame for Jean-Christophe’s disappearance and for anything that might befall him; but in her face all I could see was an immense sadness, and I could not help but pity her. She stood at the counter, her fingers nervously twisting her handkerchief, pale, heartbroken, helpless.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘How do you think I feel?’
‘And I’m sorry I got you mixed up in all this.’
‘What’s done is done.’
‘Every night I pray no harm has come to Jean-Christophe.’
‘I just wish I knew where he was.’
‘There’s still no news?’
‘Nothing.’
She stared at her hands. ‘What do you think I should do, Jonas? I was completely honest with him from the beginning. I told him I was in love with someone else. But he didn’t believe me, or maybe he thought he had a chance. Is it my fault that he never had a chance?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, mademoiselle. Besides, this is neither the time nor the place—’
She cut me off. ‘You’re wrong. This is the time and the place to tell the truth. It’s because I didn’t have the courage to tell the truth, to say what I really felt, that all this has happened. I’m not cruel, I never meant to hurt anyone.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You have to believe me, Jonas.’
‘I can’t. You showed no respect for Fabrice. You put your hand on my thigh while you sat in that restaurant smiling at him. But that wasn’t enough. You had to break Jean-Christophe’s heart. And now you’ve dragged me into your little game.’
‘It’s not a game.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘I want you to know . . . that I love you.’
I felt the room crumble around me.
Émilie did not flinch. She stared at me with her big black eyes, her fingers still clutching her handkerchief.
‘Please, mademoiselle, go home.’
‘Don’t you see? The only reason I flirted with other boys was so you would notice me; the only reason I laughed was so you would hear me. I didn’t know what to do, how to say I love you.’
‘Then don’t say it.’
‘Can a heart be silent?’
‘I don’t know, but I don’t want to hear it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Please, don’t say any more . . .’
‘No, Jonas! I love you and I need you to know that. You don’t know how hard this is for me, how humiliated I feel, baring my soul to you, telling you I love you when you don’t seem to feel anything for me. But it would be much worse to go on saying nothing when everything inside me, every breath I take, is screaming “I love you”. I loved you the first time I saw you . . . That was ten years ago, in this very pharmacy. I don’t know if you remember, but I’ve never forgotten it. It was raining that morning, my gloves were soaking wet. I’d come for my injection; I used to come every Wednesday. You had just come home from school. I remember the colour of your school bag with the studded straps, the jacket you were wearing, the fact that the laces of your brown shoes were untied. You told me you were thirteen. We talked about the Caribbean. While your mother was giving me my injection in the back room, you pressed a rose between the pages of my geography book.’
I felt a spark, and suddenly memories whirled dizzyingly in my mind and it all came back to me: Émilie . . . a little girl with a hulking man who seemed to be carved from a standing stone. Suddenly I remembered her face at the picnic when I told her I worked in a pharmacy. She was right. We had met before, a long time ago.
‘Do you remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘You asked me what Guadeloupe meant, and I told you it was a French island in the Caribbean . . . When I found the rose in my geography book, I was so touched and I hugged the book. There was a rose bush in a pot over there on the sideboard. And there used to be a statue of the Virgin Mary behind the counter, on that shelf . . .’
As she talked, the scene flooded back with extraordinary clarity and her soft voice held me spellbound; I felt as though I was being carried away by a great wave. Madame Cazenave’s voice was ringing in my head, trying to drown out her daughter, pleading with me, imploring me, and yet I could still hear Émilie’s voice over her mother’s shrieking, clear and sharp as a needle.
‘Younes . . .’ she said. ‘That’s your name, isn’t it? I remember everything.’
‘I . . .’
‘Please, don’t say anything.’ She pressed her finger to my lips. ‘I’m afraid of what you might say. I need time to catch my breath.’
She took my hand and held it to her breast.
‘Can you feel my heart beating, Jonas . . . Younes?’
‘This is wrong,’ I stammered, but I did not take my hand away.
‘Why is it wrong?’
‘Jean-Christophe loves you. He is madly in love with you,’ I said, trying to drown out the voices of mother and daughter, locked in mortal combat in my head. ‘He told us you were getting married.’
‘Why are you talking about him? I was talking about us.’
‘I’m sorry, but Jean-Christophe’s friendship means more to me than some childhood memory.’
My words clearly shocked her, but she was graceful.
‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ I tried to make up for my rudeness. ‘I’m sorry.’
She pressed her finger to my lips again. ‘You have nothing to apologise for, Younes. I understand. Maybe you were right, this isn’t the time or the place. I just needed you to know how I feel. It’s not just a childhood memory to me. I love you, and I have a perfect right to feel that way. There is no crime, no shame in love, except to sacrifice it, even for the best of reasons.’
She left the shop without another word, without turning back. Ne
ver in my life had I felt as alone as I did the moment she stepped out into the roar of the street.
15
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE was alive.
Río Salado heaved a sigh of relief.
One night, when she had almost given up hope, he phoned his mother to tell her he was all right. According to Madame Lamy, her son was rational. He spoke calmly, in simple phrases, and his breathing was normal. She asked why he had disappeared, where he was calling from, but Jean-Christophe answered with vague platitudes: there was more to the world than Río Salado, there were other places to explore. He was evasive about where he was living, how he was surviving, given that he had left with no money and no bags. Madame Lamy did not press him; she was happy simply to know her son was alive. She sensed there was something wrong, that Jean-Christophe was being rational as a means of hiding it; she was afraid that if she pushed him too hard, turned the knife in the wound, she might hurt him further.
Later, Jean-Christophe wrote a long letter to Isabelle telling her that he loved her, and regretting that he had not made things work. She thought the letter was a last testament of sorts; she cried her heart out, convinced that her spurned fiancé had thrown himself off a cliff or under a train after sending it. The postmark was illegible, so it was impossible to know where it had been posted.
Three months later, Fabrice received his letter, this one filled with apologies and regrets. Jean-Christophe admitted that he had been selfish, that, blinded by his passion, he had lost sight of what was important, had forgotten common decency and the loyalty he owed to Fabrice, whom he had known since primary school and whom he still thought of as his best friend . . . There was no return address.
Eight months later, Simon – who in the meantime had gone into partnership with Madame Cazenave to open a fashion house in Oran – received his letter. It included a recent photograph of Jean-Christophe in a soldier’s uniform, head shaved, holding his rifle. On the back it read: It’s a great life, thank you, Sergeant. The envelope had been postmarked somewhere in Khemis Miliana. Fabrice decided to go and find him, and Simon and I went with him to the local barracks, where we were told that for the past three or four years they had only been recruiting ‘natives’. They suggested we ask in Cherchell, but no one at the military school there or the one in Kolea had heard of Jean-Christophe. We checked with the garrisons in Algiers and Blida, but we could not find him. We were chasing a ghost. We went back to Río Salado exhausted and empty-handed.
What the day owes the nigth Page 20
