What the day owes the nigth

by Yasmina Khadra

  ‘I forbid you to touch him,’ she shouted in an unearthly voice.

  A man appeared behind her holding a rifle: it was Krimo, Simon’s chauffeur. Krimo was an Arab from Oran who had worked in a restaurant on the corniche until Simon hired him just before he got married. He stepped away from the wall and moved cautiously towards me.

  ‘I’ve already shot one of them,’ he yelled.

  ‘Who did this?’

  ‘Fellagas. They slit Simon’s throat and torched the place. By the time I got here, they’d gone – I saw them running through the valley and I fired. The cowards didn’t even fire back, but I heard one of them scream.’

  He stood in front of me, the glow from the flames accentuating the contempt on his face.

  ‘Why Simon?’ he asked me. ‘What did he ever do to them?’

  ‘Go away,’ Émilie screamed. ‘Go away and leave us in peace. Make him go away, Krimo!’

  ‘You heard her.’ Krimo raised his rifle. ‘Fuck off out of here.’

  I nodded and turned away. It felt as though my feet did not touch the ground, as though I were gliding through a void. I went back past the burning house, cut through the orange groves and headed back to the village. Headlights swept around the cemetery and headed up the marabout road. Behind the cars, I could see the shadows of people running. Their breathless voices came to me in snatches, but their shouting was drowned out by Émilie’s words, a maelstrom that was swallowing me up.

  Simon was buried in the Jewish cemetery. The whole village was in attendance, crowded around Émilie and her son. Émilie wore black and her face was hidden by a veil. She was determined to be dignified in her grief. She was flanked on either side by members of the Benyamin family from Río Salado and elsewhere. Simon’s mother sat on a chair, devastated, weeping, deaf to the whispers of her husband, an ageing, sickly man. Some rows back, Fabrice and his wife stood holding hands. Jean-Christophe was with the Rucillio clan, with Isabelle invisible in his shadow. I stood at the far end of the cemetery, behind everyone, as though I had already been banished.

  After the ceremony was over, the crowd silently dispersed. Krimo helped Émilie and her son into a small car that the mayor had lent. The Rucillio family left. Jean-Christophe exchanged a brief word with Fabrice, then rushed off to join the rest of the family. Car doors slammed, engines droned, the cemetery slowly emptied. Only a group of militiamen and a few policemen remained around the grave, clearly devastated that they had let the tragedy occur. From a distance, Fabrice gave me a little wave. I had thought he might come over and comfort me; but he helped his wife into their car and without turning back, climbed in and drove off. When the car disappeared behind the cemetery wall, I realised that I was alone among the dead.

  Émilie left Río Salado for Oran, but she never left my thoughts. I felt sad for her. Since no one had heard anything from Madame Cazenave, I could only guess at the depths of Émilie’s loneliness, of her grief. What would become of her? How would she start again in a city like Oran, surrounded by thousands of people she didn’t know? In the city, she would not find the compassion and the sympathy she had known in the village. There, relationships were based on self-interest, and a newcomer had to negotiate difficult hurdles in order to be accepted. Especially while a war was raging, one that grew more bitter with every passing day. The streets of Oran were dangerous; there were attacks, violent reprisals and kidnappings; every morning the citizens awoke to some fresh horror. I could not imagine how she would survive in the madness of that city, that war zone drenched in blood and tears, with a son to provide for, far from everything she knew.

  In the village, everything had changed. The end-of-season ball was cancelled for fear that a bomb might turn the event into a tragedy. Muslims were no longer tolerated in the streets. They no longer had the right to leave the fields and the vineyards without permission. The day after Simon’s murder, the army launched a wide-ranging manhunt, combing Dhar el Menjel and the surrounding scrubland. Helicopters and planes shelled any suspect village. After four days and three nights, the soldiers returned to their barracks exhausted and empty-handed. Jaime Jiménez Sosa’s militia set up ambushes throughout the area, a tactic that eventually paid off. In their first ambush, they intercepted a group of fidayin on a supply mission for the rebels. They slaughtered the mules on the spot, burned the provisions, then drove the bullet-riddled bodies of the fidayin through the streets of Río Salado on a cart. Krimo enlisted with the harkis– the Algerian soldiers loyal to the French – came upon eleven rebels hiding out in a cave, lit a fire and asphyxiated them with the smoke. Emboldened by his feat, he later lured a whole squad of mujahideen into an ambush in which he killed seven and dragged two, badly wounded, back to the village square, where the crowd all but lynched them.

  I did not dare go out any more.

  There followed a period of calm.

  I thought of Émilie constantly. I missed her. Sometimes I would imagine she was there with me and talk to her for hours. Not knowing where she was, what had become of her, tormented me. When I could bear it no longer, I went to see Krimo to ask if he could help me find her. He gave me a chilly reception. He was sitting in a rocking chair outside his shack, an ammunition belt strung across one shoulder, his rifle between his legs.

  ‘Vulture!’ he said. ‘She hasn’t even grieved for her husband and you’re already thinking about how to win her round.’

  ‘I have to talk to her.’

  ‘About what? She was pretty clear the other night. She doesn’t want anything to do with you.’

  ‘This is none of your business.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. Émilie is my business, and if you ever try to contact her, I’ll rip your throat out with my teeth.’

  ‘What did she tell you about me?’

  ‘She didn’t need to tell me anything. I was there when she told you to go to hell, and that’s enough for me.’

  I had no hope of getting any information from the man.

  For months I wandered the districts of Oran hoping to run into Émilie. I haunted the schools when class let out, but saw no sign of Michel or his mother among the parents. I hung around the stalls and the supermarkets, the gardens and the souk, but there was no sign of her.

  A year to the day after Simon’s murder, when I was finally about to give up, I saw her. She was working in a bookshop. I could barely breathe. I went to the café across the road, took a table half hidden by a pillar and waited. At closing time, she left the bookshop and caught a tram from the stop at the end of the street. I didn’t dare get on the tram with her. I had seen her on a Saturday, so the whole of Sunday I was forced to kill time. Early on Monday morning, I went back to the café opposite the bookshop and sat at the same table. At nine a.m. Émilie arrived wearing a black trouser suit, her head covered with a scarf. My heart shrivelled in my chest like a sponge being wrung out. A thousand times I took my courage in both hands and set off to cross the road, but every time, the very thought of speaking to her seemed somehow indecent.

  I don’t know how many times I walked past the bookshop and watched her serve a customer, climb a stepladder to get a book, ring something up on the till, rearrange the shelves, and still I did not dare push the door open. The simple fact that she was alive, that she seemed well, filled me with a vague but tangible joy. I was happy just to watch her live her life. I was afraid that if I came too close, she might disappear like a mirage. This went on for over a month. I spent little time at the pharmacy, leaving Germaine to cope as best she could. Often I would forget to phone to tell her I would not be home. I slept in a dingy fondouk so that I could be there, every day, watching Émilie from the café.

  One evening, as the bookshop was about to close, I ventured from my hiding place, and, like a sleepwalker, crossed the road and found myself stepping through the door of the shop.

  There were no customers, and the bookshop was almost in darkness. A fragile silence hovered over the shelves. My heart was beating fit to burst a
nd I was sweating. The unlit lamp above my head was like a sword that might fall at any moment. I was seized by doubt: what was I doing here? Why was I determined to reopen old wounds? I gritted my teeth: I had to do this, I could not go on constantly brooding over the same questions, the same fears. A cold sweat clawed at my back like nails. I took a deep breath to try to expel the poison I could feel inside. Outside on the street, cars and pedestrians moved in a strange and intricate dance. The blare of car horns slashed at me like steel blades. I waited. Inside me, I heard a voice say: leave . . . I shook my head and the voice was still. Darkness unfurled, filling the shop, delicately silhouetting the towering piles of books . . .

  ‘Can I help you, monsieur?’

  She was behind me. Fragile, ghostly, she had appeared out of the half-light just as she had on the night of the fire. A night she still wore about her, her black dress, black hair, black eyes bearing mute witness to a grief a year had done nothing to diminish. In the darkness, I had to peer to make her out. She was standing three feet away and I saw that she had changed, that her beauty had withered. She was a shadow of the woman she had been, a heartbroken widow who paid no attention to her appearance. Life had taken from her more than it could ever repay. I immediately realised my mistake. I was not welcome here. I was a knife in a wound. Her icy aloofness bewildered me and made me realise just how wrong I had been to think I could come here and make right something that I myself had shattered. And then there had been the word monsieur, peremptory, disarming, unendurable, hurling me into an abyss, wiping me from the face of the earth. I truly believed that she had survived that tragedy only so that she might hate me. She did not need to say it; I could read it in the blank, expressionless eyes, which repelled me, dared me to try to hold her gaze.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Me?’ I said stupidly.

  ‘Who else? You came by last week and the week before and almost every day in between. What are you playing at?’

  I felt my throat tighten. I couldn’t swallow.

  ‘I was just passing . . . I thought I saw you through the window . . . I wasn’t sure . . . I wanted to say hello . . . to talk to you . . . but I didn’t dare . . .’

  ‘Have you ever dared, Younes? Even once in your life?’

  She realised she had hurt me. Something stirred in those dark eyes filled with night. Something like a shooting star that flickered out as soon as it appeared.

  ‘So you found your tongue. All the time I’ve known you, you’ve had nothing to say. What did you want to talk to me about?’

  Only her lips moved; her face, her pale, slender hands, her body remained motionless. Nor were they really words, just a rush of breath, like a spell, like a curse . . .

  ‘Maybe I’ve come at a bad time.’

  ‘I hope there’ll never be another time. I want this over with. What did you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘About us.’ My words seemed to come by themselves.

  A faint smile played on her lips.

  ‘About us? Was there ever an us?’

  ‘I don’t know where to begin.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘You don’t know how sorry I am. I’m so, so . . . Do you think you can ever forgive me?’

  ‘What difference would it make?’

  ‘Émilie . . . I’m so sorry.’

  ‘They’re just words, Younes. Oh, there was a time when one word from you would have changed everything, but you couldn’t bring yourself to say it. You need to understand that it’s over.’

  ‘What’s over, Émilie?’

  ‘Something that never really began.’

  I was shattered. My head was exploding, I couldn’t hear my heartbeat, couldn’t feel a pulse in my temples. I could hardly believe I was still standing.

  She stepped towards me as though emerging from the wall behind her.

  ‘What did you think, Younes? Did you think I’d rush into your arms? Why? Was I expecting you to come? Of course not. You never allowed me to expect anything from you. You took my love for you and strangled it before it could take flight. Just like that . . . My love for you was dead before it even hit the ground.’

  I said nothing. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth I might burst into tears. I realised now the pain I had put her through, realised that I had crushed her hopes, her dreams, trampled her wholesome, innocent joy, the artless confidence that had once set her eyes ablaze.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Younes?’

  There was a lump in my throat, all I could do was nod.

  ‘Why? Why did you turn me away? If there was someone else, I might have understood. But you never married . . .’

  Taking advantage of a moment’s inattention, a tear slipped through my lashes and trickled down my cheek; I did not have the courage or the strength to stop it. Not a single muscle in my body responded.

  ‘It tormented me night and day,’ she went on, her voice lifeless. ‘What was it about me that made you reject me? What did I do wrong? He doesn’t love you, I told myself, it’s as simple as that. There’s nothing wrong with you, he just doesn’t love you. But I didn’t believe it. You were devastated after I got married. It was then I realised there was something you weren’t telling me . . . What are you hiding, Younes? What is it that you can’t bring yourself to tell me?’

  The dam burst; tears spilled out, coursing down my face, my neck, and as I wept, I felt everything drain away: the pain, the remorse, the deceit. I cried and cried and never wanted to stop.

  ‘You see,’ she said. ‘You still can’t bring yourself to talk to me.’

  By the time I looked up, Émilie had vanished as though she had been swallowed up by the wall behind her, by the encroaching darkness. The bookshop was deserted but for a trace of her perfume drifting between the shelves, and in another aisle, two old ladies who stared at me pityingly. I wiped my tears away and walked out of the bookshop feeling as though a fog from nowhere was enveloping the last rays of sunlight.

  18

  IT WAS seven p.m. on a spring day in late April 1959, the sky licked by the last rays of sunset as a lone cloud, straying from the flock, hung suspended over the village waiting for a gust of wind to carry it away. I was stacking boxes in the back office and getting ready to close. When I came back into the shop, I found a young man standing in the doorway to the street. He was nervous, and clutched at his jacket as though hiding something.

  ‘I’m not here to hurt you . . .’ he stammered in Arabic.

  He was sixteen, perhaps seventeen; his face was pale and I could clearly see a fine down on his upper lip. He looked like a runaway. He was skinny as a rail and wore trousers ripped at the knees, muddy boots, and a scarf around his throat.

  ‘It is closing time, isn’t it?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  He opened his jacket to reveal a pistol tucked into his belt. My blood ran cold.

  ‘I was sent by El-Jabha – the FLN. Close up the shop. Nothing’s going to happen to you if you do what you’re told.’

  ‘What the hell is this about?’

  ‘It’s about your country.’

  When I hesitated, he drew the gun though he did not aim it at me. He repeated his orders. I pulled down the shutters, my eyes fixed on the barrel of the gun.

  ‘Now go back inside.’

  He was almost as scared as I was. Terrified that his fear might get the better of his sense, I put my hands up to reassure him.

  ‘Turn on the lights, then close the shutter on the window.’

  I did as he said. In the silence of the back room, my heart hammered like the piston of a runaway train.

  ‘I know your mother is upstairs. Is there anyone else in the house?’

  ‘I’m expecting friends,’ I lied.

  ‘Then we’ll wait for them together.’

  He wiped his nose on his sleeve and jerked his head for me to go upstairs. As I climbed the stairs, I felt him push the barrel of the gun into my side.

  ‘Like I said, noth
ing will happen to you if you do what you’re told.’

  ‘Put the gun away, I promise I’ll—’

  ‘You don’t give the orders here, and don’t go by how old I look – there’s more than one who didn’t live to regret it. I’m an agent of the Front de Libération Nationale. They think you can be trusted; don’t disappoint them.’

  ‘Can I ask what they want with me?’

  ‘Do I have to remind you we’re at war?’

  On the landing, he pushed me against a wall, listening to the clatter of dishes being washed in the kitchen. A muscle in his cheek twitched.

  ‘Call her.’

  ‘She’s old, she’s not well . . . Why don’t you put the gun away?’

  ‘Call her.’

  I called to Germaine. I expected her to scream when she saw the gun and was bewildered to find her perfectly calm. The sight of the pistol barely raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I saw him coming through the fields,’ she said.

  ‘I’m with the Maquis,’ the boy said in an arrogant tone he hoped was commanding. ‘Both of you, sit in there in that big room. If the phone rings or there’s someone at the door, don’t answer. You’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  He jerked the gun towards the sofa. Germaine sat down, crossing her arms over her chest. Her coolness made me feel more calm. She tried not to look at me, probably hoping I would do the same. The boy crouched down in front of us, staring at us as though we were just two more pieces of furniture. He seemed to be holding his breath. I couldn’t work out what was going on in his head, but I was relieved to see he was less nervous than when he first arrived.

  The living room was utterly dark. His gun pressed against his thigh, the boy crouched in the darkness; there was no movement but for the glitter of his eyes in the darkness. I suggested turning on the lights. He didn’t respond. After several hours, Germaine started to fidget. She was not nervous or even tired – she obviously needed to go to the toilet and, out of a sense of propriety, could not bring herself to ask this strange boy for permission. I did it for her. The boy clicked his tongue.