by Simon Pare
I would murder God, Jesus and all his brood if that were the price to pay to go back in time and stop my granddaughter from leaving the house.
Such is my prayer.
Two people know, Aziz and I, but neither of us dares open his heart to the other. The two of us are cowards, most likely. Aziz at least has an excuse: he doesn’t yet know that I know.
The kidnapper told me that he’d demanded that Aziz murder someone. “Who?” I’d asked, incredulous and yet knowing from his victorious tone that he was telling the truth. “Anyone, of course! The first person he comes across. Pure chance. A magnificent beast, chance, incidentally!”
I was dumbstruck. Luckily I was on the balcony, out of earshot of Latifa and Meriem. What’s more, the driver of a stationary lorry opposite the block of flats was giving his engine a good rev. Before making the phone call, I lit a cigarette, one of the very occasional ones I still allow myself. This one fell from my hand. My interlocutor had adopted an overly affable tone.
“You’re wondering how I managed to persuade Aziz?”
I had grabbed hold of the balustrade. The man had insisted, his voice almost friendly.
“Aren’t you wondering how I went about it?”
My hand groped along the metal balustrade. I stopped breathing – for a very long time.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t killed her; she’s too useful to me. I’ve just removed two or three of her fingers. I can’t remember exactly how many. As you know, we usually have ten fingers, not to mention our toes, but their usefulness is more questionable. So it’s not all that bad, even if it does spurt blood everywhere. On the other hand, the knife comes and goes, and I sometimes have trouble controlling it. Especially if people don’t do as I say…”
The man gave an involuntary little chuckle.
“But then you know all about that type of persuasive argument, don’t you? Well, you used to, my friend. Don’t be so modest! In the field in which you – how should I put it? – used to work, they even said you were something of an ace at your game…”
I didn’t immediately grasp the significance of his words. Like my hand on the balustrade, my panic-frozen mind was groping around hopelessly for some new rules for understanding language, unable for an instant to accept that the kidnapper’s words about Shehera’s fingers might have some acceptable corollary in the real world.
“Hey, granddad, are you listening to an old brother who’s back from the lands of the past?”
I managed to force a vague yes from my dead throat. The stranger sighed in pretend relief.
“Luckily you’ve got a steady nerve, from your old – how should I call it? – occupation. Or would you prefer: profession, vocation? Oh, by the way, I don’t know whether your Aziz will have the guts to go through with what I’ve asked of him. Does he love his daughter enough to do it? Well, I’ll know more by tomorrow morning. But unfortunately for you, you have even less choice, because here’s what you’re going to do for me.”
Breathlessly, I ventured, “You’re not from the GIA, are you?”
“You think I’m stupid enough to belong to a bunch of lunatics like that?”
“Who are you then?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Content yourself with the knowledge that, for the last few years, I’ve thought about you more often than if you’d been, say, my beloved twin brother! Will that do for… for starters, you fucking shithead son of a bitch?”
A gasp of emotion made him stutter. He had continued, checking his anger badly but jovial nonetheless. “I’m the one asking the questions. I’ve been waiting for this day for so long. Now, I repeat: here is what you’re going to do for me.”
I gazed at Aziz with a mixture of disgust and affection. Affection, yes, because, one way or another, the guy was like me now. I don’t know whether he faltered at the last, but I know now that he has obeyed the crackpot’s orders. I can see it in the lines of his face, in his exhausted posture, in the shifty way he returns my gaze. Too much of an open book, incidentally: he’ll be easy game for the police. Maybe he’ll withstand the blows, but he’ll definitely talk, mainly to justify his actions to himself. All it will take, after a couple of good beatings, is for a clever policeman to whisper to him, “I’ve asked around and you’re a decent man, so tell me why you did it. Tell me, brother, and I’ll make sure I explain to the others!” Algerians like the word brother, especially in the mouths of people who are beating them up, so Aziz will crack and confess whatever they want him to.
He doesn’t yet know that his act won’t be enough to satisfy the appetite of the ogre that munches children’s fingers.
“So Mathieu, what is it you need to tell me so urgently?”
Aziz crossed his legs in a gesture of fake nonchalance.
I feel like putting my arms around my son-in-law’s shoulders and crying all the world’s tears with him. I can’t, of course; men don’t blubber in this bloody country! But how am I supposed to tell Aziz that the kidnapper has now demanded that I kill him too, him, my son-in-law, within a day starting at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning? That the madman has left me no choice, other than to resign myself, should I refuse, to knowing that Shehera will be tortured some more?
I watch, without seeing, a stubborn ant climbing up the waxed cloth towards I know not what ant-sized Jerusalem. Dear God, I should have croaked fifty years ago! Nobody would have batted an eyelid and perhaps even my one-time compatriots, the French in France, would have come to regard me as a hero! A lousy fucking hero, so terrified of the decision he now has to make that he is reduced to waiting for the inevitable moment when his prostate packs in…
I stare at Aziz, taking advantage of the fact that he thinks I’m too old to have all my wits about me. I’ve never actually had a proper conversation with him apart from the usual commonplaces about our health or the weather and grumbling about rising prices and the corruption of our country’s immovable rulers. I try to think what strategy to adopt and realise that I’m not capable of it.
“I don’t give a damn whether or not you trust me to release her as soon as your son-in-law’s dead!” the man on the telephone chided me, revelling in the terror he sensed in my supplications. “The main thing is that you trust me when I tell you that, if you disobey me, I will prune your granddaughter with a pair of secateurs, twig by twig, taking my time, until she dies!”
Of course I had yelled out, “No, she’s just a child!” (but my yells had been drowned out by the driver revving his engine). A nasal snigger had put me in my place. “So you’re calling for help from your old friend Allah, eh, like I used to do during my darkest years? As if Allah’s ever stopped evil things from happening! Remember what happened to me… Remember what Tahar did…”
I had suddenly felt my lungs compress, as if the oxygen I was breathing had turned toxic. “What are you talking about? Tahar’s been dead for ages. What could he have possibly done to you? He was the best of men…”
His voice had jeered at me. “Of course you think he’s the best of men! You’re bound to; you’ve shared a wife. Creates a strong bond, a woman’s arse does, especially a nice juicy one. Don’t tell me there are still things you don’t know about your wife’s first husband. I bet that whore Latifa told you everything while you were screwing her: how they would do the double-backed beast, she and her dog Tahar, about her husband’s little moans of ecstasy when she sucked him off, and all the other dirty secrets of his oh-so-heroic life he boasted about as pillow-talk after a good shag… Ah… Oh… bastard…!”
He was overcome with rage. I had objected feebly, “I’ve never done you any harm…” He had whistled, before bursting into a succession of very high-pitched cheeps. “Ah, but you have too, you bastard! A long time ago, it’s true, but – ah – to me it feels like it was yesterday! Rack your brains, trawl through your cesspit of memories and I’m there, up to my neck in it, and I’m not the only one…”
I had heard a very distinct sob as he repeated, “…And I’m not the only one…”
Before hanging up, still spluttering, he spat out, “Now it’s payback time. Cash down. For everyone.”
He had referred to the war. To my war. To Tahar’s war, and therefore to mine. I had seen black dots moving about in front of my eyes. Over fifty years had passed, but to me – and to this kidnapper, it seemed – it was more like a handful of days.
An obscure aphorism popped into my mind, one my fisherman father had used and I had never really understood: “Time, when you give it time, runs quicker than a hare chased by a ravenous hound.” A surly man, exhausted by endless trips out to sea, he would repeat it over and over again to me when I complained about his long absences. As I looked at him in incomprehension, my father would finish his sentence, his voice turning all mysterious, with his characteristic dry humour: “…especially since, for us humans, time is both the running hare and the hound chasing it.”
Oh, my poor father, capable of punishing me for some stupid prank with a slap that would have felled a bear, as well as watching over me several nights running when I was struck down with fever… We loved each other as many people on this planet love their parents: a great deal of love mixed in with a touch of unchanging resentment. I was twenty when I left home after a violent and of course trivial argument. The hound of time had set about savaging the frightened hares we had become, and neither of us had been smart enough to patch things up before it was too late.
No longer bothering to hide his exasperation, my son-in-law got to his feet.
“Mathieu, I don’t know quite what you’re brooding about, but as for me I’m knackered. I’m going to have a lie-down, unless you tell me what’s going on right now.”
I thought: “Yes, you future corpse, I’ve been ordered to kill you. So I’d like to have a chat with you about how best to go about it without causing too much anxiety to the rest of the family…” and to my alarm I spoke the words I dreaded with all my soul because they implicated me: “Aziz, I think I’ve… I’ve got something to do with… with your daughter’s kidnapping. I mean, somehow…”
My diction was disjointed with panic. I must have gone bright red. Aziz looked at me as he might have looked at a raving madman. Finally he shrugged his shoulders in contempt. With my index finger I chased away the ant, which, with great effort, had made it to the edge of my cup.
“Don’t worry, son, I’ve still got all my wits about me. But it’s a long story… a complicated one… a family matter…”
Irritated, my son-in-law made a gesture with his hand that meant both ‘Stop taking the piss!’ and ‘Fancy a punch in the face?’
“I’m not kidding, Aziz. Especially not at a time like this.”
His lower lip trembled. There was some hatred – and some loathing – in his voice.
“Do you think there’s not enough suffering in this house without you adding to it with your ramblings?”
Aziz had started off muttering in French but finished – from suffering onwards – in Arabic. He had gone stiff. He clenched his fists, raising them slightly in front of him. I sensed that he was close to hitting me. I felt a surge of anger of my own. We squared up to each other like two stupid apes, an old ape and a young ape that hadn’t come to earth to suffer like this.
I hesitated just long enough for one last warning from my inner martinet (Don’t jump off the cliff, Mathieu. It’s too high and, at the bottom, there’s no sea, only rocks! What if you were wrong all down the line? You’ve been wrong so often and about so many things in the past.) before saying, “I’m going to try and explain, Aziz. But first make sure the door’s shut properly.”
“Listen, Aziz. However long we live, when all’s said and done, we live little. I have therefore lived little. And, incidentally, you too will live little, even if you live till you’re a hundred.”
My voice trickled to a ridiculous, husky halt. His face closed, Aziz hesitated, rubbing one shoe with the end of the other, before electing to sit down again.
“…And during this short existence, among those I have loved the most have been Tahar and then Latifa…”
The old man, lost, looks with great pity at the individual sitting opposite him. But he can’t avoid feeling this heartrending pity for himself too or, at least, for the young man he was when, decades earlier, he had first set foot in Algeria. He would like to stroke the head of this other him, so innocent and so full of enthusiasm, so stupid too, who would have screamed in horror had he known one-tenth of the crimes that awaited him, stacked carefully on the shelves of his future life. Of course, back then Mathieu was a handsome twenty-eight year old and he thought himself truly happy for the first time in his life because he had met a girl in Paris. She was pretty, a minor council employee, and so shy to begin with. But things had gone quickly and efficiently; after three weeks of sustained courting, he had kissed her. One month later (which was remarkably quick for the time!), he made love to her. And in early autumn, he had brought up their future plans together, admittedly in the usual roundabout way, but leaving no doubts as to his intentions.
What was her name again, the girl who would take his penis in both hands and slide it inside her but then bite the cushion when she had her orgasm out of fear that her nosy neighbours might hear her and, through the concierge, inform her parents who had stayed in the provinces? Françoise, that was it… Joy had sparkled deep in her eyes when she understood the muddled declaration he had taken days to piece together in the loneliness of his hotel room. He had been overwhelmed with gratitude at his ability to spark such rapture in a woman. He felt that she deserved to be loved even more. The next day she had taken three days off to travel down with him to the famous docks at Port-Vendres, which at the time were buzzing with maritime traffic between France and the Algerian colony. The two lovers’ promises had been even more explicit when they separated. They did not know that their kisses on that Mediterranean quayside, moist with the spray of the unknown, would be their last and that, despite the letters they exchanged for a year with their share of ardent promises and recriminations, they would never see each other again.
Mathieu shudders. It feels as if he is recalling a time several million years ago and that, like the enormous saurians of old, this Françoise of such sweet memory is no more than a fossil buried under the debris of time. Maybe she really is dead? All of a sudden, he hopes against hope that, if that were to be the case, at least his pretty Parisienne with the cheerful eyes and the then firm buttocks and breasts might have been lucky enough to glean a few moments of happiness here and there.
He sighs. The silence draws on. Aziz gives a little cough and the man takes up his tale again. He starts to tell Aziz – who occasionally nibbles his lip in alarm – how the events leading up to this cursed day fit together. But Mathieu has already vaguely decided that he will skirt whole sections of the truth. For one never tells everything, not even to oneself.
Basically, it had all begun with him playing a trick on his own destiny. He’d never envisaged enlisting in the French army again, let alone the French Algerian army. After some scratchy and shortened studies, he had done his military service in barracks in the depths of his native Brittany; then, half out of spite, half out of a desire to disappoint his father, he had stayed on in the army. His memory of it now was of a hazy period, solid boredom during the week, solid drunkenness at the weekend, surrounded by non-commissioned officers and officers doing their utmost to deserve the reputation for pig-ignorance associated with their function.
Like most of the men, he had spent a few days in the military jail following more or less drunken fights. Every time he came out again feeling that he had done his level best to become even more like any other man of his age. Although he was surprised by the fact, he didn’t like himself; and not liking himself, he didn’t feel the need to ‘improve’ the image and social status of the imbecile doing such a bad impression of him before the eyes of the world.
The garrison commander had finally taken umbrage at this grumpy and notoriously incompetent non-commissioned offi
cer and had decided to get rid of him as quickly as possible. By one of those odd quirks that are not uncommon in army administration, Mathieu had been summoned to Paris and then forgotten for months in an office at the ministry. He had used the time to scour Paris and meet the young woman who would occupy his heart and body for the rest of his stay.
His disciplinary posting to Algeria had, at first sight, come at the worst possible moment, but he consoled himself with the thought that his contract would expire less than six months later and that real life would then begin, with that Françoise, for example, or a different one, even prettier and even more in love, if fortune really swung his way. Up to that point, he hadn’t had to make any real choices, having been happy to follow, at every stage in his life, the path of least resistance in his decision-making. He had found himself in Algiers the summer before the endless war against the FLN, the National Liberation Front, started.
He hated the country from the very first day. Too hot, too much cheeriness and too much chattering among the Europeans, too many Arabs in the streets with their dark looks and this language that was a personal attack due to his ignorance of it and whose guttural sounds conveyed something other than the apparent submissiveness. When his contract ended, driven by the very same process of self-contempt and spineless acquiescence to events that had already pushed him into the army’s arms once, he span a coin in front of colleagues as tipsy as he was to decide whether he should re-enlist. The army chiefs of staff were starting to take the ‘troubles’ seriously. There were whisperings among the rank-and-file that this wasn’t just an umpteenth Arab uprising, but that an organised movement seemed to be coordinating actions by men whom the local newspapers would continue for a long time, seemingly to reassure themselves, to call a bunch of highwaymen.
