‘In Lourmel?’
‘Yeah, last Thursday. You were coming out of the dry cleaner’s.’
‘There’s a dry cleaner’s in Lourmel?’
I couldn’t remember. For some time now I would simply jump into my car and drive wherever it took me. Twice I had found myself in the bustle of the souk in Tlemcen without knowing how I had got there. I was suffering from a waking form of sleepwalking that took me to places I barely knew. Germaine would ask me where I had been and I could not remember.
‘You’ve lost a lot of weight. What’s wrong with you?’
‘I don’t know, Simon. I ask myself the same question . . . What about you, what’s wrong with you?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Then why do you look the other way when you see me in the street?’
‘Me? Why would I look away when I see my best friend?’
‘People are fickle. It’s been more than a year since you dropped by my house.’
‘That’s just the business. It’s growing so fast and the competition is vicious. I spend more time in Oran than I do in Río Salado. Surely you don’t think I was ignoring you?’
I wiped my mouth. I was finding the conversation irritating. There were too many false notes. The Simon who was sitting across the table was not the Simon I knew – the life and soul of the party, my confidant, my ally. In his meteoric rise, he had left me far behind. Maybe I was jealous of his success, of the new car he parked on the village square so the local kids could crowd around and gawp, of his radiant health, the fact that he had lost weight. Maybe I resented his partnership with Madame Cazenave. But I knew it was none of these things. The fact was that I was the one who had changed. Jonas was fading and Younes was coming to the fore. I was becoming bitter and mean, a latent spitefulness, never articulated, that welled in me like heartburn. I could no longer stomach the parties, the weddings and the balls, the people on café terraces. Their good humour irritated me. And I had learned to hate . . . I hated Madame Cazenave, hated her with every fibre of my being. Hatred is corrosive; it eats away at the soul, lives inside your head, takes possession of you like a djinn. How had I come to loathe and despise a woman who no longer meant anything to me? When you can find no reason for your misery, you look for someone to blame. Madame Cazenave was my scapegoat. Hadn’t she seduced and abandoned me? Wasn’t it because of that fleeting mistake that she had made me swear to give up Émilie?
Émilie!
Just thinking of her, I felt myself wasting away.
The waiter brought a basket of bread and a salad of black olives and cornichons. Simon thanked him and asked if he could have his kebabs as soon as possible, as he had a meeting. After two or three mouthfuls, he leaned over the table and whispered, as though afraid someone would overhear:
‘I’m sure you’re wondering what I’m so excited about . . . If I tell you something, can you keep it a secret? You know what people are like . . .’
In the face of my indifference, his excitement faded. He frowned.
‘There’s something you’re not telling me, Jonas, something serious.’
‘It’s just my uncle . . .’
‘Are you sure you’re not pissed off with me?’
‘What makes you think I’m pissed off with you?’
‘Well, here I am about to tell you a wonderful piece of news and you have a face that could stop a clock.’
‘Go on, then, tell me, maybe it’ll cheer me up.’
‘Oh, it will! Madame Cazenave offered me her daughter’s hand in marriage, and I accepted. But don’t say anything, it’s not official yet.’
I was speechless.
In the restaurant window, my reflection was still sitting impassively, but inside I was falling apart.
Simon was trembling with excitement – the same Simon who had called Émilie a ‘preying mantis’ and a ‘pricktease’! I could no longer take in what he was saying; all I could see was the jubilation in his eyes, his smile, his nervous fingers tearing a piece of bread, crumpling his napkin, hesitating between knife and fork, his whole body quivering with happiness . . . He wolfed down the kebabs, drank his coffee, smoked a cigarette, talking all the while. Then he got to his feet, and saying something that I couldn’t hear for the shrieking in my head, put on his coat and left, waving to me through the window before he disappeared.
I sat glued to my chair, my mind a blank. I did not come to myself until the waiter came to tell me the restaurant was closing.
Simon’s plan did not remain a secret for long. In a few short weeks his secret machinations were common knowledge. In Río Salado, when he drove past, people waved and shouted ‘You lucky devil!’; girls stopped Émilie in the street to congratulate her. Malicious gossips said that Madame Cazenave had sold her daughter out. Everyone else simply looked forward to the celebrations.
Autumn tiptoed away and the winter that followed was particularly harsh. Spring arrived, and with it the promise of a glorious summer. The hills and plains were cloaked in deep lush green. The Cazenaves and the Benyamins planned to celebrate their children’s engagement in May and their wedding with the first grape harvests.
A few days before the engagement party, just as I was bringing down the shutters, Émilie showed up. She pushed me back inside the pharmacy. She had crept through the village wearing a peasant shawl, a nondescript grey dress and flat shoes so that no one would recognise her.
She was so upset, she did not call me Monsieur Jonas.
‘I suppose you’ve heard. My mother forced my hand. She wants me to marry Simon. I don’t know how she got me to say yes, but nothing is sealed. Everything depends on you, Younes.’
She was ashen. She had lost weight and her eyes had lost their power to command. She seized my wrists and, trembling, pulled me to her.
‘Say yes,’ she said, choking. ‘Just say yes and I’ll call it all off.’
Fear blighted her beauty, she looked as though she had just recovered from some terrible illness. Wisps of tangled hair spilled out of the scarf, her lips trembled and her anxious eyes glanced from me to the street. Her shoes were white with chalk dust, her dress smelled of the vines, her throat glistened with sweat. She had clearly gone around the village and cut through the fields to get here without arousing curiosity.
‘Say it, Younes. Tell me you love me like I love you, that I mean as much to you as you do to me. Take me in your arms and hold me . . . You’re my destiny, Younes, the life I want to live, the risk I want to take. I will follow you to the ends of the earth. I love you . . . Nothing and no one is more important to me. For the love of God, say yes . . .’
I said nothing. I stood dazed. Frozen. Speechless. Agonisingly silent.
‘Say something, for God’s sake, say anything. Say yes, say no, but don’t just stand there! What’s the matter with you? Have you lost your voice? Don’t torment me like this, just say something.’
She became more heated; she could not stand still, and her eyes blazed.
‘What am I supposed to think, Younes? What does this silence mean? That I’m a fool? You’re a monster . . . a monster!’
She beat her fists against my chest, piteous and angry.
‘There’s not a grain of humanity in you, Younes. You are the worst thing that has ever happened to me.’
She slapped my face, pounded on my chest again, screamed at me to drown out her sobs, and still I stood there speechless. I felt ashamed at what I was putting her through, ashamed that all I could do was stand there, mute and lifeless and a scarecrow.
‘I hate you, Younes. I’ll never forgive you for this, never . . .’
And she fled.
The following morning, a little boy brought me a package. He didn’t tell me who had sent it. I removed the paper, carefully. I knew instinctively what I would find. Inside was a book about the French islands of the Caribbean, and when I opened the cover, I found the remains of a rose as old as time itself; the rose I had slipped between the pages of this very book a million years before,
while Germaine was treating Émilie in the back office.
The evening of their engagement party I spent in Oran with Germaine’s family. I told Simon that there had been a death in the family.
The wedding was planned for the start of the grape harvest. This time, Simon insisted, I was not to leave Río Salado under any circumstances. He asked Fabrice to keep an eye on me. I had no intention of absconding. It would be ridiculous. What would my friends and everyone else in the village think? How could I not attend the wedding without arousing suspicion? Or was it more honest to arouse suspicion? None of this was Simon’s fault. Simon would have done anything for me, just as he would for Fabrice. How would it look if I ruined the happiest day of his life?
I bought a suit and a pair of dress shoes for the ceremony.
As the wedding party drove through the village in a thunderous roar of car horns, I put on the suit and walked out to the big white house on the marabout road. A neighbour offered to give me a lift, but I said no. I needed to walk, to synchronise my footsteps to the rhythm of my thoughts, to deal with them rationally one by one.
The sky was cloudy and a fresh breeze whipped my face. Outside the village, I walked past the Jewish cemetery, and coming to the marabout road, I stopped and stood at the crossroads, looking up at the festive lights at Madame Cazenave’s house.
A light drizzle had begun to fall, as if to rouse me from my thoughts.
Only after something is done do we truly realise it cannot be undone. Never had a night seemed to me so ill-omened; never had a celebration seemed to me so unjust, so cruel. The music drifting on the breeze sounded like an incantation that conjured me like a demon. I felt excluded from the joy of these people as they laughed and danced. I thought about the terrible waste my life had become . . . How? How could I have come so close to happiness and not had the courage to seize it with both hands? What terrible sin had I committed that I was forced to watch love seep though my fingers like blood from a wound? What is love when all it can do is survey the damage? What are its myths and legends, its victories and its miracles if a lover is not prepared to rise above, to brave the thunderbolt, to renounce eternal happiness for one kiss, one embrace, one moment with his beloved? Regret coursed through my veins like a poisonous sap, swelled my heart with loathsome fury. I hated myself, this useless burden abandoned by the roadside.
I went home, drunk on grief, leaning against walls so as not to fall. My bedroom seemed unwilling to accept me. I slumped against the door, eyes closed, and listened as every fibre of my being clanged. I got up and trudged to the window as though it was not my bedroom but a desert I was crossing.
A lightning flash lit up the shadows. Rain was falling gently. The window panes themselves were weeping. Be careful, Younes, I thought, you’re wallowing in self-pity. But what did that matter? This was what I saw: the windows crying. I wanted to see tears streak the window panes, I wanted to feel sorry for myself, I wanted to dissolve body and soul into my grief.
Maybe it’s for the best, I thought, Émilie was not meant for me. It’s as simple as that. You cannot change what is written in the stars. Lies! Later, much later, I would come to this realisation: nothing is written. If it were, there would be no need for trials, morality would be an ageing hag and shame would not blush in the presence of virtue. Though there are things beyond our understanding, for the most part we are the architects of our own unhappiness. We fashion our faults with our own hands, and no one can boast that he is less to be pitied than his neighbour. As for what we call fate, it is nothing but our own dogged refusal to accept the consequences of our weaknesses, great and small.
Germaine found me slumped by the window, face pressed against the glass. For once, she did not disturb me. She tiptoed out of the room and soundlessly closed the door.
16
I THOUGHT about jumping on a train and getting as far away from Río Salado as possible. I thought of Algiers. Of Bougie. Of Timimoun. But I could not picture myself strolling down a boulevard, or sitting on a rock staring out to sea, or meditating in a cave. I could not run away from myself. Whatever train or plane or boat I took, I would end up trailing this unshakeable thing that filled me with its bile. But I knew I could not go on brooding in my room. I had to go away. It did not matter whether I went a thousand miles or simply to the next village, I needed to be somewhere else. It was impossible for me to live in Río Salado now that Simon had married Émilie.
I remembered a deranged evangelist who used to preach on market days in Jenane Jato. He was a tall man, thin as a rake, who wore a threadbare cassock. Every week he would stand on a rock, ranting and raving: ‘Misery is a dead end that stops at a brick wall. If you want to escape it, you must back out carefully, never taking your eyes off the wall. That way it looks as though the wall is receding.’
I had gone back to Oran, to the neighbourhood where I had lived with my uncle. Perhaps I was trying to go back in time to my schooldays so that, older, wiser, I might return to the present, a virgin in mind and body, with a thousand opportunities open to me and the wisdom not to waste them. Seeing my uncle’s old house did nothing to ease my pain. I did not recognise the place – it had been repainted green, the bougainvillea had been ripped out, leaving the low wall bare, the shutters on the windows were closed. There was no echo of my childhood here.
I knocked on the door of the house across the street, but it was not Lucette who opened it. ‘She’s moved,’ a strange woman said to me. ‘She didn’t leave a forwarding address.’
I wandered around the city, listening to the dull roar from the football stadium, but it could not drown out the roar within me. In Medina J’dida – the ghetto where Arabs and Kabyles lived – I sat on a café terrace and watched the crowds on the Tahtaha square, convinced that I would eventually spot the ghost of my father in his green coat. Men in starched white burnous moved among beggars in rags and tatters. An ancient world was being rebuilt here of bazaars and hammams, silversmiths, cobblers and tailors. Down the centuries, Medina J’dida had never given up hope. It had survived cholera, it had survived scorn and contempt. It was Muslim, Arabic and Berber to its fingertips. Cut off behind the Moorish walls of the mosques, it rose above the insults and the slander, considered itself dignified and noble, proud of its craftsmen, of folk heroes like S’hab el Baroud and his Raqba – respectable criminals who charmed children and women of easy virtue and made the locals feel secure. How had I managed to live without this part of my birthright? I should have come here regularly to fill the gaps in my identity. Río Salado and I no longer spoke the same language; how should I speak now? When I lived in Río Salado, had I been Jonas or Younes? Why, when my friends laughed, did I hesitate a moment before laughing with them? Why had I always felt that I had to carve out a place for myself among my friends? Why did I feel guilty whenever I met Jelloul’s eyes? Had I simply been tolerated, integrated, biddable? What had stopped me from being myself, forced me to identify with the society I was growing up in and turn my back on my own people? I was a shadow, indecisive, easily led. I was constantly listening for some slight, some insult, the way an adopted child is more aware of his parents’ momentary indifference than he is of their love. But even now, as I tried to redeem myself in the eyes of Medina J’dida, I suspected I was still deluding myself, absolving myself and looking for someone else to blame. If Émilie had slipped through my fingers, who was to blame – Río Salado, Madame Cazenave, Jean-Christophe, Simon? The fault, I knew, was mine; I had not had the courage of my convictions. I could find excuses for myself, but the blame would still be mine. Now that I had lost face, I was looking for a place to hide.
Tahtaha loosened the vice-like grip of my fears and failings, and my pain subsided as I wandered through the crowds, watching the tireless dance of the water-sellers, bells on their ankles, water skins slung across their chests, coloured hats whipping in the wind as they pirouetted in a whirl of frills and flounces, pouring cool water flavoured with oil of cade into copper goblets, which passers-by d
rank down like magical elixirs. I imagined myself slaking my thirst with the crowd, smiling as the water-seller performed a quick dance, frowning as someone ran off without paying, ruining his good humour . . .
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ The waiter roused me from my thoughts.
I wasn’t sure of anything . . .
And why wouldn’t people leave me in peace?
The waiter stared at me, puzzled, when I got up to leave, and it wasn’t until I got back to the European part of the city that I realised I had left without paying.
In a smoky bar where discarded cigarette butts lay smouldering in the ashtray, I stared at the glass in front of me, which seemed to be mocking me. I wanted to drink myself senseless – I felt myself unworthy to resist temptation – but though I tried to pick the glass up a hundred times, my arm refused to bring it to my lips. ‘Got a cigarette?’ asked the woman sitting next to me. ‘Pardon?’ ‘Guy with a handsome face like yours has no business being miserable.’ Her breath stank of alcohol. I was exhausted. I could barely see clearly. She was so caked in make-up that she barely had a face. Her eyes were invisible behind grotesque false eyelashes, her large mouth was flaming red, her teeth stained from smoking. ‘You got troubles, pretty boy? Well don’t worry, I’m here to sort them out . . . The good Lord sent me to find you.’ She slipped her arm through mine and, with a jerk, pulled me away from the bar. ‘Come on . . . there’s nothing for you here . . .’
For seven days and seven nights she kept me in a squalid little room on the top floor of a fondouk that stank of hashish and beer. I can’t say whether she was blonde or brunette, young or old, fat or thin. I remember only her big lips and her voice, ruined by cigarettes and cheap booze. Then one night, she told me I’d had my money’s worth and pushed me towards the door, kissing me on the mouth – ‘That one’s on the house.’ Before I left she said, ‘Get a grip on yourself. There’s only one god here on earth, and that’s you. If you don’t like the world, make one you like better. Fortune smiles on those who smile on her.’
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