by Simon Pare
“Oh really? And what difference does it make to us, Mathieu? Whether he’s an Islamist or not, whether he’s acting in the name of God or of the devil, the result is the same: he’s still taken my daughter!”
I don’t know. I told you he gave my father’s name.”
“Maybe he works for the civil service or at the public records office? You must have had to give some details about your family – father, mother, things like that – when you filled out your naturalization forms.”
He remained silent. I heard him swallow down his saliva. I sensed that he hadn’t yet told me the most important thing. He got out a cigarette, but didn’t light it.
“Actually, he said something else just before her hung up. “Do you remember M’sila?”’
“What’s this about M’sila?”
“It’s up on the High Plateaux…”
“Because now you’re going to explain to me where M’sila is?” I said with a vulgar snigger.
“No, but it’s where I did my military service.”
I gave a start.
“What do any of your veteran’s stories have to do with us?”
“Nothing, probably.”
He blinked, then looked away, too quickly, leaving me with the unpleasant feeling that he was lying.
“Say what you’ve got to say, Mathieu.”
“He also said something about Tahar.”
“Tahar?”
“Yes, Latifa’s first husband.”
“Meriem’s father?”
He wagged his chin to say yes.
“That’s all common knowledge,” I protested, “especially as Meriem’s father’s a war hero. There’s even a road named after him in a town up in the Aurès mountains!”
Mathieu’s eyebrows arched helplessly.
“Of course, but he also mentioned the place where I arrested Tahar.”
“You arrested Meriem’s father?”
“Yes, when I was in the French army. You won’t have forgotten that I’m a good old Breton and that, at the time, a guy my age from my country had no choice but to enlist under the French flag and do his bloody military service fighting your people. The fellagha and their kind, if you see what I mean, son…”
His voice was full of dark humour. I didn’t pick him up on either the scornful ‘son’ or ‘fellagha’, which sounded even more contemptuous when spoken by a Frenchman to an Algerian.
“And what was the place called?”
“It happened not far from a douar called Mechta Kasbah.”
“Doesn’t ring any bells. Should it?”
A sarcastic twinkle glittered in his eyes.
“I see that you really know your country’s history well, like all Algerians.”
I reached for the door handle, exasperated by his condescension. I had more urgent things to do than to subject myself to the barbs of some stupid old fool, even if he was my father-in-law. The Frenchman’s gaze, both evasive and beseeching at the same time, made me break off my gesture. The man decided to light the cigarette he had been abusing for some time.
“There’s probably no link. I don’t think so, anyway.”
He took a first nervous drag and then a second before throwing the cigarette out of the window.
“I’ve been smoking non-stop since yesterday. I feel like there’s tar in my mouth,” he said, justifying himself.
“Mathieu, what exactly are you hiding from me?”
The vertical wrinkles that had formed between his eyebrows were now so pronounced that they reminded me of gashes with a scalpel.
“This man knows me too well to be a simple criminal.”
“What is this crap? So there’s some link between you and this bastard?”
“Or… between him and Meriem’s father?”
“But he’s been dead for ages…”
I looked at him in disbelief.
“That’s it?”
“Yes, that’s it. But it’s incredible, all of this.”
His evasive attitude fuelled my exasperation. I tapped on the steering wheel with my index finger.
“Sorry to rush you, but I’ve got things to do. Go home, and I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Where are you going?”
“Urgent errand.”
“What errand can be that urgent on the day your daughter was kidnapped? Your wife needs you.”
My voice shook with impatience.
“I don’t need any lessons from you, Mathieu. I know better than you how I should behave towards my wife. Hurry up, please!”
My father-in-law did as he was told with bad grace. The basket was heavy, but I didn’t help him. Just as he was about to slam the door, he called out slightly breathlessly, “He didn’t make any particular demands?”
I hesitated, my cheeks burning.
“Er, no… He got in touch with me just to tell me that Shehera was in his hands. He didn’t make any demands, apart from keeping everything quiet from the police. Let’s wait for a ransom request, either today or tomorrow.”
The Breton put down his basket. He arranged the baguettes, all the time peering strangely at me.
“You’re not fobbing me off?”
“What is this little game, eh? Accusing one another of keeping secrets?”
The suspicious look hadn’t left his face. I thought: “Go screw yourself!” as I replied as calmly as possible, “Why would I fob you off? Aren’t we both on the same side, our family’s side?”
A sordid observer inside me burst out laughing: There you go, pretending to be such a good boy! You’ll need an alibi later on and you can’t afford to let this nitwit suspect anything!
Mathieu picked up the basket again, his face twisting with the effort. He took two paces towards the block of flats before suddenly turning round.
“You know, whatever you may think, Tahar was a very good friend of mine.”
He seemed to be weighing up the pros and cons of the confession he was about to make.
“Might even be the only friend I ever had in life. I married his wife, but that’s got nothing to do with it. I fell in love with her by accident. She’s one of the only things I still love in Algeria – along with Meriem and your daughter.”
His eyes glinted with a sudden sparkle and I caught myself thinking that this apparently timid man, diminished by the humiliations of age, must have been an awkward customer in his youth – and the image of a merciless tracker of maquisards flashed through my mind. He paused slightly, as if stunned by his own candour, before concluding, in a panting, almost furious outburst, “And I love them more than you could ever imagine!”
Standing there in front of the entrance to the tower block, he looked even thinner than usual. “You’ll snap soon like a dried-out reed, Mathieu. Whatever made you stay in a country that dislikes you? I don’t know what you did for them, but you were well and truly wrong to trust in the fraternity and gratitude of a people intent on forgetting!”
I toyed with this idea for a couple of seconds before deciding that I would postpone a critical examination of my father-in-law’s tiny shavings of revelation till later. I checked my mobile’s battery and screen; the kidnapper hadn’t tried to reach me. My relief was almost immediately transformed into its polar opposite: there was always a chance I’d receive some news about my daughter as long as this nutter got a kick out of threatening me over the phone!
…Are you going to finally make up your mind, you blathering coward!
I felt the foetus of fear in my belly kick out brutally. My God, how could my brain talk to me as if it were lodged in someone else’s skull? He’ll cut her to pieces if you don’t make up your mind fast! Choose the fine human lamb you’ll offer up to this telephone devil quickly, you two-bit Abraham! Right now, he is your all-powerful God! Do you really think old Abraham was any better off than you? If he hadn’t resigned himself to killing his beloved son, he and his whole family would have been punished and his son with them, in the cruellest fashion imaginable too, if you want my opinion.
&n
bsp; “I don’t want your opinion,” I whined.
My voice echoed eerily around the inside of the car. By some absurd reflex, I looked round to check that there was no one in the back.
I didn’t have much time left. I had to commit a crime within the next few hours and I didn’t have the faintest idea of which ‘procedure’ I should follow. I pushed down hard on my bladder with both fists, as my terror was not only giving me a splitting headache but also a constant urge to urinate. Closing my eyes, I tried to regain a semblance of control over my limbs and my bowels – to no avail, of course.
I sighed – and the efffff sounded like a groan. I started the car without a clue where I was heading, depressing the clutch with an absent-minded glance in the rear-view mirror. It was just at that moment that he came out of the block of flats – striding ahead, with a broad, toothy grin, engaged in animated conversation with a neighbour.
A great lump of coldness condensed my panic into a sort of ice-axe about to drive a hole through my stomach.
How come I hadn’t thought of him?
Is he the one?
“Yes, he’s the one,” I answered myself.
How can you be so sure? If I understand correctly, you’ve just decided the fate of a human being in the time it took to depress the clutch?
I refused to listen any further. Gritting my teeth, I pulled on the handbrake. The man, now alone, was still in sight.
I massaged my temples vigorously. I got out of my vehicle after pushing the damned bag under the front seat. I blinked. The weather was wonderful. I chuckled through my teeth: “It’s a very fine day for killing, my friend Aziz…” and, after some thought, “It’s a wonderful day to get killed, my stupid friend.”
I didn’t take anything with me as I realised that the murder couldn’t take place until after dark. I walked towards the man with the intuition that spontaneity would be my best decoy.
He was buying some peanuts in the local café. For a second, like someone taking a lungful of oxygen before diving deep underwater, I thought of my daughter. Then, extinguishing all lights of humanity in my head, I saw myself only as an animal lying in wait, all its faculties trained on one overriding instinct – to defend its offspring.
I approached the man locals suspected of ‘working’ as an informer for shady police or army agencies with a fittingly shy smile, the ‘submissive’ smile any beggar in the human horde adopts when the person he is approaching is socially superior to him. And, as normal convention willed it, my interlocutor reacted with a distrustful expression containing a slight trace of smugness that justified my obsequious attitude.
“Hello, Si Abdou.”
“Ah, hello Si Aziz… How is our chief biologist?” he replied in an almost familiar tone of voice.
I couldn’t remember ever having talked about my job in his presence. I immediately stiffened, as though my interlocutor had just confirmed everyone’s suspicions. He noticed my confusion and it seemed to amuse him.
We exchanged the usual meaningless phrases about the health of our respective families, the weather and the incompetence of the council departments who weren’t getting round to filling in the potholes.
“Well?…” he suddenly interrupted me with a meaningful arching of the eyebrow, “let’s get to the point.”
“Si Abdou, I need a bit of advice.”
“Oh?” he replied. His inquisitive eyes studied me with the attention of an entomologist hesitating as to whether a new species is dangerous or not.
“I’ve got a slight administrative… problem.”
“And?”
“And they say you know a lot of people…”
“You know people talk a lot of nonsense.”
The man’s face remained impassive. I swallowed hard, making it up as I went along.
“I’m looking to sell a building plot… in a very good location. I inherited it… But I’m having some trouble with certain civil servants at the land and property office. You know, things involving the repeal of the agrarian revolution, land being nationalised and then handed back to its owners. My late father was lucky enough… I mean, if we can really call it luck because the land was only restored after his death. The plot’s huge, it’s worth a fortune and I desperately need money… A wife and child, our flat’s too small… I’m sure you can help me out, Si Abdou.”
I looked at him with a deliberately fearful expression to show that it hadn’t escaped me that he worked in the upper echelons of the ‘office’ and that he must have – it went without saying in such cases – some influence in just about every council department.
“I know how to show my gratitude, believe me. I’m a man of my word.”
This phrase was so bombastic and out-of-place that he blinked in surprise. He stood there, dumbfounded, his teeth nibbling at his lower lip. He had ordinary features that could either have been those of a good family father or the worst kind of criminal. He had put down his newspaper on a bench to open his packet of peanuts. Wordlessly, he motioned for me to dig into the packet of peanuts. I thanked him with a smile, though I was afraid it might twist into a grimace. To stiffen my courage, I thought of all the gossip about my neighbour, particularly stories about him being guilty of raping teenagers during the riots.
“Don’t give me your answer just yet. We’ll talk about it later, if you agree, when you get back from work.”
I took his hand and shook it gratefully. At that precise moment, my gesture was completely heartfelt but for reasons that would have horrified my interlocutor: I thought that I had detected in his eyes the glint of greed that any hunter looks for when he has laid his trap. The informer let me clasp his flaccid hands without any resistance.
Bending my head, I whispered, “I shall be waiting for you in my car at about seven this evening. We’ll go and have a look at the plot of land and you’ll see how good a location it is. It’s a real bargain, trust me. You’ll come, I hope?”
He studied me with his expressionless pupils. He put his packet of peanuts in his pocket and walked off with a curt nod by way of goodbye. To judge by his impassiveness, the man I imagined to be an expert in dirty tricks must have sensed a trap!
I collapsed on a bench under the shock of this new onslaught of despair. I leaned back on the bench and put my arm over my face. For a few seconds of dizzying abjection, I gleefully considered the thought of publicly drowning myself in a pool of tears.
“Ooh, what a face! Is it that trouble with your land that’s put you in this state?”
I was aghast. The man was bending over me, examining me without any decency, just intense curiosity. Straightening up, he wagged his chin in satisfaction.
“I forgot this,” he said at last grabbing his newspaper, before adding, as if it was of no importance, “Seven o’clock, right? And don’t keep me waiting.”
I watched the hunched man as he strode off. I began to feel myself breathing again. A stranger had slowly stretched out his body within mine, knocking aside everything that got in his way; the snarl he had sketched did not appear on my face, but its bitter cheer spread almost voluptuously through the ruins of my blood.
I looked around for a place to spit – I felt, in fact, as if my mouth was flooded with blood.
Initially I had thought of asking Mathieu and his wife to go home, but meeting Abdou had changed everything; there was no longer any question of Meriem staying in the flat on her own. That afternoon I’d got a call from Hajji Sadok. I didn’t feel up to arguing with him. I allowed my voicemail to record a message in which he ordered me to explain my incomprehensible behaviour that morning; “hysterical” he called it. But right now, he scolded me, that wasn’t the most urgent matter; the delegation had been extremely put out by the fornicating monkeys. For reasons of public morality, it had advised the relevant ministry to give them to an Algerian university as soon as possible or, even better, to sell them for a high price to a foreign pharmaceutical company. To spare the Congolese president’s feelings, the zoo would find a way of
replacing the bonobos with some ordinary chimpanzees that were less keen on petting. There were two endings to my boss’s message: first, a threatening “Come back quickly, you knucklehead, or I’ll be forced to file a report to the ministry!”, before he thought better of it and said, in a beseeching tone I’d never heard him use before: “Hurry up, Aziz, I… I don’t want those fucking monkeys put down or turned into laboratory sausages. Shit… It’s haram – they’re almost human!”
For a brief moment, in the depths of my Sahara-like sorrow, I felt like laughing. So, despite his prudery my director had finally taken a liking to our new lodgers! Immediately afterwards, the tiny part of me with any generosity left judged that I deserved a good slap for my sarcasm. “The coming days will lap up your blood, my dear Lucy, and you won’t have a clue how to save your own skin or your baby girl!” I thought disconsolately.
Time was running out unbearably slowly, as if every second now had to squeeze through far too small a hole. Mathieu and I frequently caught each other checking our phones were on properly. I didn’t speak to him, as I was scared that I would arouse his suspicions. I felt his eyes on my back the whole time. My mother-in-law was slumped on the sofa like a heap of rags, crying.
As for Meriem, she was beyond tears. She flicked endlessly through the family photo album, repeatedly shutting it and opening it with stifled groans. Her hand furtively stroked a portrait of our daughter. Her suffering gradually filled the whole room like a liquid. With a heavy heart, I watched my wife’s lacerated face. Somehow or other, I was certain that she would refuse to carry on living if our daughter were not returned to us.
“Do you think he’s treating her well,” she asked me suddenly as she examined a photograph of Shehera on her first day at school.
I coughed before explaining, with as much conviction as I could muster, “It’s not in his interest to harm her. His sort only have one so-called political objective. The hostages are in no danger as long as everyone does what they’re told to. They must just have got the wrong person with us.”
She stared eagerly at me.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. We’ll have her back by tomorrow at the latest.”
