What the day owes the nigth

by Yasmina Khadra

  The plane lands on the tarmac in a roar of the reverse thrust of the engines. The boy next to me points to the planes waiting to take off. Over the speakers, a flight attendant’s voice tells us the temperature outside, the local time, and thanks us for choosing Air Algérie, before insisting that we remain seated with our seat belts fastened until the plane comes to a complete stop.

  The teenager carries my hand luggage and gives it back to me when we reach immigration. After the official formalities, he points me to the exit, apologising that he has to wait for his luggage.

  The frosted glass door into the arrivals hall slides back. Behind the yellow line, people are waiting impatiently to recognise a familiar face among the stream of arriving passengers. A little girl lets go her of father’s hand, runs up and throws herself into the arms of a granny wearing a djellaba. A young woman is plucked from the crowd by her husband, who kisses her chastely on both cheeks, but there is passion in their eyes.

  A man of about fifty stands off to one side holding a sign marked ‘Río Salado’. For a second it is like seeing a ghost. He is the image of Simon: short, stocky, pot-bellied and bow-legged, his hair already receding. And his eyes are Simon’s eyes; those eyes that immediately recognise me – how can he spot me in this crowd when we have never met before? The man gives me a little smile, comes over and holds out a chubby hand exactly like his father’s.

  ‘Michel?’

  ‘That’s me, Monsieur Jonas. Pleased to meet you. Did you have a good flight?’

  ‘I slept for a bit.’

  ‘Have you got any luggage?’

  ‘Just this bag.’

  ‘Okay. My car is in the car park.’ He takes the bag and gestures for me to follow him.

  Slip roads branch out dizzyingly ahead of us. Michel drives fast, eyes fixed on the road ahead. I don’t dare to turn and look at him; I simply see his face in profile. It is astonishing how much he looks like Simon, my old friend, his father. My chest tightens at the fleeting memory. I take a deep breath to expel the poison suddenly seeping through me. Focus on the road as it whips past, on the shimmering sunlight of the cars as they weave, on the road signs flashing past above our heads: Salon de Provence, straight ahead, Marseille, bear right at next exit; Vitrolles, next exit . . .

  ‘I expect you’re hungry, Monsieur Jonas. I know a nice little bistro . . .’

  ‘That’s all right, they served us dinner on the plane.’

  ‘I’ve booked you into the 4 Dauphins, not far from the Cours Mirabeau. You’re lucky, apparently it’s going to be sunny all week.’

  ‘I’ll only be staying for a couple of days.’

  ‘Everybody’s waiting to see you. Two days will never be enough.’

  ‘I have to get back to Río Salado. My grandson is getting married . . . I wanted to come earlier, to be at the funeral, but getting a visa in Algiers is a devil of a job. I had to get friends in high places to put in a word . . .’

  The car hurtles into a tunnel beneath a vast fortress of glass and steel that seems to surge from nowhere.

  ‘It’s the Aix-en-Provence TGV station,’ Michel explains.

  ‘But we’re not in the city.’

  ‘The station is on the outskirts. It’s only been open five or six years. The town is about fifteen minutes away. Have you ever been to Aix, Monsieur Jonas?’

  ‘No . . . In fact I’ve only ever been to France once. To Marseille in March 1964. I arrived at night and left the following night.’

  ‘Just a flying visit?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Deported?’

  ‘Rejected.’

  Michel looks at me, puzzled.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I say, to change the subject.

  We drive through a commercial district full of hypermarkets, shopping centres and underground car parks. Huge neon signs vie with billboards and a sea of people streams around the shops and the markets. There is a traffic jam at the exit and the tailback is half a mile long.

  ‘The consumer society,’ Michel says. ‘People seem to spend their weekends shopping these days. It’s terrible, isn’t it? My wife and I come every other Saturday. If we miss a Saturday, we find we start arguing over nothing at all.’

  ‘Every generation has its own drugs.’

  ‘You’re very right, Monsieur Jonas, every generation has its drugs.’

  We are now coming in to Aix-en-Provence, twenty minutes late because of an accident at the Pont de l’Arc. The weather is beautiful and the whole town seems to have shut up shop and headed for the centre. The pavements are teeming with pedestrians and the atmosphere is festive. The stone lions are standing guard around the fountain in the middle of the roundabout on La Rotonde. A Japanese man is taking his girlfriend’s photograph through the whirl of traffic. A small fairground has a flock of children crowding around a handful of attractions; children attached to bungee cords are making death-defying leaps as their terrified parents watch. The sunlit café terraces are full to overflowing, there is not a single free table; the waiters race around, trays balanced precariously. Michel lets a minibus full of tourists pass and drives slowly up the Cours Mirabeau, turning near the top on the Rue du 4 Septembre. My hotel is next to the Fountain of the Four Dolphins. A young blonde girl greets us at the reception desk and has me fill out a form, then directs me to a room on the third floor. A bellhop takes us upstairs, sets my bag down on a table, opens a window, checks that everything is in order and, wishing me a pleasant stay, disappears again.

  ‘I’ll leave you to take a nap,’ says Michel. ‘I’ll come back and pick you up in a couple of hours.’

  ‘I’d like to go to the cemetery.’

  ‘We’re doing that tomorrow. Today, you’re coming over to my house.’

  ‘I have to go to the cemetery now, while it’s still light. Honestly, I need to.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll call our friends and ask them to put things back an hour.’

  ‘Thank you. I don’t need to freshen up and I certainly don’t need a nap. We can go now if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘I’ve got something I need to do. Can we go in about an hour?’

  ‘That would be fine, I’ll be waiting downstairs at reception.’

  Michel takes out his mobile phone and heads out, closing the door behind him.

  He comes back an hour later and picks me up on the steps outside the hotel. I get into the car and he asks if I managed to get any rest; I tell him I lay down for a bit and feel much better now. We head down the Cours Mirabeau, still humming in the shade of the plane trees.

  ‘What are they celebrating?’ I ask.

  ‘Life, Monsieur Jonas. Aix celebrates life every day.’

  ‘It’s always like this here?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘You’re very lucky to live here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t live anywhere else. My mother used to say that the sun here almost makes up for missing Río Salado.’

  Saint-Pierre cemetery, where Paul Cézanne among others is buried, is deserted. At the gates, a stone monument commemorating the French of Algeria and others who were repatriated greets me. The inscription reads: The true resting place of the dead is the hearts of the living. Tarmac pathways lead between grassy areas and ancient chapels. There are photos on some of the tombs as reminders of those who have passed away: a mother, a husband, a brother who died before their time. There are flowers on the graves and the shimmer of marble softens the harsh sunlight and fills the silence with an almost rural tranquillity. Michel leads me through the carefully laid-out paths, shoes crunching on the gravel. Grief is closing in. He stops before a grave with a black granite headstone heaped with mounds of wreaths and dazzling flowers. An inscription reads: Émilie Benyamin, née Cazenave, 1931–2008.

  There is nothing more.

  ‘I expect you’d like to be alone for a minute?’ Michel says.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I’ll take a little walk.’

  ‘That’s very kind.’<
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  Michel nods his head gently, biting his lower lip. His grief is overwhelming. He walks away, chin pressed against his chest, hands clasped behind his back. When he disappears behind a row of red limestone crypts, I crouch down next to Émilie’s grave, clasp my hands next to my lips and recite a verse from the Qur’an. It is not Sunni tradition, but I do it all the same. In the eyes of popes and imams we are Us and Them, but in the eyes of the Lord we are one. I recite the Sura Al-Fatiha and two passages from the Sura Ya-Seen.

  Then, from my pocket, I take out a small cotton purse. I untie the string and open it, slip my shivering fingers inside, take out a pinch of dried petals and scatter them over the grave; this dust is all that remains of a flower picked from a rose bush in a pot almost seventy years ago; the remains of the rose I slipped between the pages of Émilie’s geography book while Germaine was giving her her injection in the pharmacy in Río Salado.

  I put the empty purse back in my pocket and get to my feet. My legs are trembling; I have to lean against the headstone. It is my own footsteps I hear on the gravel now. My head is filled with fragments of voices and fleeting images. Émilie sitting in the doorway of our pharmacy, the hood of her coat pulled up, fingers playing with the laces of her boots. I could have mistaken her for an angel come down from heaven. Émilie absently leafing through a large hardback book. What are you reading? A book about Guadeloupe. What’s Guadeloupe? It’s a French island in the Caribbean. Émilie the day before her engagement party Say yes – just say yes and I’ll call it all off. Ahead of me the path is reeling. I feel ill. I try to walk faster but I can’t. Like in a dream, my legs refuse to move; they are rooted to the spot.

  There is an old man standing at the gates of the cemetery wearing a uniform decked out with medals from the war. He leans on a walking stick, dark eyes staring out of his crumpled face, and watches me stagger towards him. He does not step aside to let me pass; he waits until I come alongside him and says to me:

  ‘The French have left. The Jews and the Gypsies have left. There’s just you lot left in Algeria, so why are you still slaughtering one other?’

  I don’t know what he is referring to or why he is talking to me like this. I can glean nothing from his face. I have a sudden flash of memory: this is Krimo. Krimo who swore he would kill me back in Río Salado. Just as I remember who he is, a searing pain shoots through my jaw; the same pain I once felt long ago when he hit me with his rifle butt.

  ‘Remember me now? I can tell from your face that you remember me.’

  I gently push him aside and walk on.

  ‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? What is it with the massacres, the bombings that go on and on? You wanted independence – you’ve got it. You wanted to decide your own fate? Fine! And what have you got? Civil war, terrorists, the Armed Islamic Group. Isn’t that proof enough that all you people are good at is wrecking and killing?’

  ‘Please, I came to visit a grave, not to dig up the past.’

  ‘How touching.’

  ‘What do you want, Krimo?’

  ‘Me? Nothing . . . Just to get a good look at you. When Michel phoned to tell us the reunion had been pushed back an hour, it was like they’d postponed the Last Judgement.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me, Younes. Have you ever stopped to think what a tragedy your life is?’

  ‘I don’t want to have to listen to you, Krimo. I didn’t come here to see you.’

  ‘But I came to see you – came all the way from Alicante to tell you that I haven’t forgotten, and I haven’t forgiven.’

  ‘That’s why you dragged your old uniform and your medals out of some cardboard box rotting away in your cellar?’

  ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘I’m not God, and I’m not the republic. I don’t have the authority to recognise your people or to sympathise with your grief. I’m just a survivor who doesn’t know how he came through without a scratch when he was no better and no worse than those who died . . . If it’s any comfort, we’re all in the same boat. We betrayed our martyrs, you betrayed your ancestors, only to be betrayed in turn.’

  ‘I never betrayed anyone.’

  ‘You poor fool. Don’t you realise that one way or another, everyone who survives a war is a traitor?’

  Krimo wants to wade in again, his mouth is twisted with rage, but Michel’s sudden reappearance stops him in his tracks. He looks me up and down, then steps aside to let me pass, and I walk down to where the car is parked next to a fairground.

  ‘Are you coming with us, Krimo?’ Michel asks him, opening the car door.

  ‘No, I’ll take a taxi.’

  Michel does not insist.

  ‘Sorry about Krimo,’ Michel says as he starts the car.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Am I going to get the same kind of welcome wherever we’re going?’

  ‘We’re going to my house. This might surprise you, but a couple of hours ago Krimo was jumping up and down he was so excited about seeing you again. He didn’t seem angry or upset. He flew in last night from Spain and spent all night laughing and joking about the good old days in Río Salado. I don’t know what got into him.’

  ‘He’ll get over it, and so will I.’

  ‘Probably for the best. My mother used to say that sensible people always make up in the end.’

  ‘Émilie used to say that?’

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘How many children have you got, Monsieur Jonas?’

  ‘Two, a boy and a girl.’

  ‘Grandchildren?’

  ‘Five . . . the youngest – he’s getting married next week – was the champion diver in Algeria four years running. But my pride and joy is Norah, my granddaughter. She’s twenty-five and she runs one of the most important publishing houses in the country.’

  Michel accelerates. We drive along the Route d’Avignon and stop at a red light; a sign points to Chemin Brunet and Michel takes it. The road winds steeply upwards, lined on either side by walls behind which are beautiful villas, glorious houses protected by high gates. The neighbour-hood is tranquil, radiant and burgeoning with flowers. In the street there is not a single child playing, only a handful of old people waiting in the shade of climbing vines for their bus.

  The Benyamin house is on the brow of the hill, nestled in a grove of trees. It is a small white villa surrounded by ivy-covered walls. Michel presses a remote control and the gate opens automatically to reveal a large garden and, in the distance, three men sitting at a patio table.

  I clamber out. Two of the three old men get up. We stare at each other in silence. I recognise the taller man, one of my neighbours back in Río Salado, a little stooped now and bald, but I cannot remember his name. We were never very close; we’d say hello when we passed each other in the street, then promptly forget about each other. His father was stationmaster at the local train station. Next to him I recognise a man of about seventy – well preserved, with a determined chin and a high forehead – as Bruno, the young policeman who loved to strut about the village square, twirling his whistle around one finger. I am surprised to see him here; I’d heard he’d been killed in an OAS attack in Oran. He comes up to me and holds out his left hand – his right hand is a prosthesis.

  ‘Jonas . . . it’s a pleasure to see you again.’

  ‘It’s lovely to see you too, Bruno.’

  The tall man also greets me, limply shaking my hand; he clearly feels self-conscious. I suppose we all do. In the car, I had been imagining a joyful reunion, wholehearted embraces, throaty laughs counterpointed by loud claps on the backs. I imagined myself hugging some, holding others at arm’s length so that I could look at them, hearing old nicknames, old jokes; slipping back into childhood as someone told a story, finally exorcising fears that had haunted us for years, keeping only those memories we cherished. But now that we are finally together, all in one place, a strange awkwardness drains all our enthusiasm and we stand, speechles
s, like children meeting for the first time who do not know how to start the conversation.

  ‘You don’t remember me, Jonas?’ the tall man asks.

  ‘Your name is on the tip of my tongue, but I remember you – you lived at number six, behind Madame Lambert. I can still see you climbing over her wall to pilfer from her orchard.’

  ‘It was hardly an orchard . . . just one big fig tree.’

  ‘It was an orchard. I live at number thirteen, and I still hear Madame Lambert yelling at kids scrumping fruit from her orchard.’

  ‘My God . . . all I remember is that big fig tree.’

  ‘Gustave!’ I shout, clicking my fingers. ‘Now I remember – Gustave Cusset, the class clown. Always showing off.’

  Gustave bursts out laughing, pulls me to him and hugs me hard.

  ‘What about me?’ the third man asks, not getting up from the table. ‘Do you remember me? I never went out scrumping apples, and in class I was as obedient as a puppy.’

  He has really aged – André J. Sosa, the braggart, the big shot of Río Salado, who used to fritter money away as fast as his father earned it. He is huge, obese even, his paunch hanging down to his knees; his braces barely hold it up. He’s bald now, his face barely recognisable through the creases and the wrinkles. He smiles, showing a perfect set of false teeth.

  ‘Dédé!’

  ‘That’s me,’ he says. ‘An immortal, like they say about those old codgers in the Académie Française.’