Abduction

by Simon Pare

  “I… It’s…”

  Eyes still wide, the soldier brought up the sleeve of his jacket to wipe his lips without thinking.

  “Yes, it’s me, the disfigured freak! Biting the dust, are we? Ah, I almost forgot that you loved Algeria so much now you’d like to eat it! Come on, let’s get going. Actually, the good thing about having a hostage is – that you could come in useful if the patrol catches up with us.”

  The words spilled out of Mathieu’s mouth. “They’ll… they’ll kill us both.”

  Then, as if embarrassed by such a spontaneous expression of his fear, he said, “The captain must have realised – he’s not a jerk like me. He’ll definitely ask for a commando party to be sent out.”

  For a short moment a hint of uncertainty veiled the Algerian’s gaze.

  “All right then, you’ll be my justification for my own people.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I… I left them in a bit of a hurry, without having really received permission.”

  “You’re a traitor to the FLN?”

  “No, but the tendency is to regard you as one until there’s proof of the contrary! You’re my ticket home – coming back with a gaouri from the colonial intelligence services can’t do me any harm. You must know a few things, eh? At least the names of traitors from our side…”

  “But then I… they’ll…”

  “I very much hope they’ll…”

  The fell let out a long, apparently gleeful chuckle, but his eyes took no part in it. He mimicked several instruments: a whip, a nail wrench, a soldering iron.

  “Yes, they’ll… you, then they’ll… you and even… you…. If need be I’ll give them a few ideas about how an experienced French army torturer goes about making someone talk. And then, when the fun is over, we’ll post your bollocks to that fine DOP captain you admire so much.”

  “But you can’t… I set you free…”

  “Set me free, did you? After making me drink bucketfuls of water mixed with disinfectant and urine? Get walking, you son of a bitch. One wrong move and I’ll put a bullet up your arse. Wouldn’t make a pretty sight, comrade. Your shit would mix in with your blood, infect your intestine or your stomach, and you’d suffer for many long hours, days even, of agony before dying of gangrene. By that time, you’d have been stripped to the bone by jackals or wild boar. Because they are allowed to eat pig!”

  The farcical flight of the battered torturer and the murderer twisted by this land of distrust is how Mathieu would describe, much later, their several days of wandering through a landscape of thorny undergrowth furrowed by almost waterless wadis where, without admitting it, they hid from both the French military and the local peasants. The latter might just as easily have turned out to be allies of the FLN maquisards as relatives of the victims of Melouza hell-bent on vengeance. Not to mention the zealous harkis or the even more numerous and unpredictable ‘neutrals’, who were quite capable of turning you in to someone, anyone… Any of these had excellent reasons for eliminating them in a way that was par for this war – in other words: as hideously as possible.

  Mathieu very soon realised that Tahar didn’t know the area any better than he did. They passed some shepherds who didn’t see them – or pretended not to see them, which was very much the role of a lookout. They were very fortunate when some French soldiers just missed them. A helicopter passed overhead, but they hid under some jujube trees in time. The Frenchman, still in his fatigues, walked in front of the Algerian.

  Tahar was showing signs of exhaustion towards the end of the first day. Mathieu guessed that they were probably deep in rebel territory where the army only deployed commando parties and air support. His companion’s eyes kept falling shut with fatigue and pain before opening again to search around haggardly for his prisoner. They rested as best they could (Tahar balanced the gun on his knees with his finger on the trigger!) in the shade of a copse of ash trees lost in thorny scrubland that announced the sheltering forest they could make out on the horizon. They hadn’t eaten since dawn, and the little water they had found in a wadi crevice was but a maddening memory. Running his tongue over his desperately parched lips, Mathieu cursed himself for not having brought either a canteen or any food with him, even though he knew that kind of clobber would have aroused the sentry’s suspicion. The old and new prisoners exchanged very few words, the former contenting himself with a waggle of his chin to convey his orders. Only once did Mathieu beg him, “Take me back to the road; I saved your life!” All his guard granted him was an indifferent glance.

  In late afternoon they ran into a cork harvester perched on his donkey. As if it were a normal occurrence to meet a swollen-faced native with his gun trained on a French soldier with a bloody forehead, the peasant greeted them ceremoniously and went on his way without looking round.

  “Hey, call him back. Maybe that bloke has something to eat or drink in his bag. I’ve got some money on me, remember?” Mathieu asked, raising his voice, driven to distraction by his companion’s silence. “This can’t go on. We’re dying of hunger and thirst!”

  “We’re carrying on. He’ll report us!”

  They upped the pace heading west, only stopping when they reached the cover of some cork oaks at dusk. Finding their way by the croaking of the frogs, they came to a pool which, despite the vile-looking water, struck them as a miracle of nature. They gathered together some mealy acorns, which Mathieu reluctantly swallowed for want of anything better. Busy chomping on the large seeds with his back against a tree trunk and the pistol flung down at his feet, Tahar didn’t seem to be watching his hostage as closely as before. The bucolic, almost fraternal nature of the scene, beneath an unreal moon, plunged the Frenchman into a stupor. Had he really tortured the man who was now nibbling away just as melancholically as he at these acorns, which were bound to give them both diarrhoea before long? And this Arab, whose expression occasionally segued into utter despondency, and who was deep in thought at that moment, twiddling a blade of grass between his fingers; could he really have murdered teenagers? Were they not like Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday on a virgin island, miraculously deprived of everything and especially of the memory of their crimes?

  “Own up to something for once,” Mathieu exclaimed, spitting out the fibrous bits to escape this feeling that was seriously bothering him, “you’re just as scared that there might be some maquisards around, aren’t you? What kind of filth have you been up to make you so afraid of your brothers from the ALN?”

  Tahar studied him maliciously.

  “You’ve made a fair bit of progress since this morning, my boy; you’re saying ALN now instead of fellagha! Another blow with a rifle butt and you’ll forget those ‘sand niggers’ and ‘rats’ you’ve showered me with… Maybe the mountain air will go to your head and you’ll forget that you even tortured me?”

  The brown eyes stared intently at him– different eyes from those that had blinked in terror when he was in the DOP’s hands. (More intelligent, Mathieu realised with horror before thinking, unaware of his own irony: You little wog, you speak French far too well to be completely trustworthy!)

  “What do you expect? That I’m going to forget that you wrecked my body and soul, all because you helped me escape? You fucked me with bottles, made me swallow my own shit and piss, and now you want to chat to me as if we were in some Moorish café in Constantine? Or maybe you think you’re some kind of inverse Christ figure? You beat someone and then forgive the person you’ve beaten. But I haven’t asked you for anything!”

  He stood up, clenching his fists. Close by, perched in the upper branches like some sinister bystander, a crow croaked away like a saw.

  “Why did you set me free anyway? You think I’m just a child-killer, a barbarian. Since when does anyone help someone like me? Since when does a shit like you help a shit like me? What do you expect of me? That I’m going to thank you for it as well? Eh? That you’ll get off that lightly, eh?”

  He had uttered these two “ehs’ like the groa
n of a very old man, several tones lower than the rest of his outburst, and all the more menacing for it. The two men sized each other up for a few seconds, then Mathieu suddenly dived forwards, reaching for the pistol on the ground.

  The soldier felt as if his jaw was going to explode, because Tahar had jammed his knee between the gun and his chin. Before he could even check whether it was broken, another blow, this one aimed at his lower back, sent him sprawling face down for the second time that day.

  “Move so much as a finger and you’re dead. Watch out: this isn’t the Arab son of a bitch you demolished back at the DOP talking to you; this is the barrel of your pistol. And it’s in great shape…”

  He sniggered. “A real pistol from your mother country.”

  Tahar ordered the prisoner to take the laces out of his big army boots and then, at gunpoint, to tie his feet together.

  “Pull it tight, no cheating. Now, lie down and stretch your arms out well behind you. Further.”

  He tied his wrists together with the second bootlace. Then he doubled the bonds around his ankles with Mathieu’s belt.

  It was now completely dark. The moonlight barely filtered through the thick branches. The man contemplated the figure lying at his feet and his face displayed only immense despair. He turned the captive’s body over with the toe of his shoe. Neither of them could see the other’s eyes.

  “You and I have a problem of vocabulary, my friend.”

  And tearing a branch off the cork oak, he lashed Mathieu with it. The latter screamed, more in surprise than pain.

  “No bawling, dickhead. Sound carries a long way round here and those ALN guys have sharp ears.”

  The second blow was even harder.

  “The vocabulary problem is the following: I know what torture is like; you don’t. You have practised it on others, but it remains – how should I say? – theoretical. I thought you needed to gain a deeper knowledge of your profession by crossing that boundary. I’ve decided to generously share some of my past experience with you. You’ll find out that no experience is more personal. We’ll make do with what we’ve got here – some branches and maybe some stones. When you’ve learnt your lesson well, we’ll be on a roughly equal footing to talk about it.”

  After a pause, he added, “If you’re still alive, of course.”

  He beat him all night, carefully seeking out the most tender areas, pulling down the prisoner’s trousers to lash his buttocks, then his genitals. When Mathieu, unable to stand the pain any longer, started screaming in a voice that was so distorted it could have been a woman’s, Tahar gagged him.

  “Answer my question,” panted the Algerian with tear-soaked spite. “Is my beating worse than the ones you and those DOP fuckers of yours dealt me? If you don’t tell me the exact truth, I promise that I will break open your skull here and now and piss on the brains spilling out of it! So answer by nodding your goddamn fucking head: Is this blow… (Mathieu had huddled up, but the branch caught him on the testicles)… Hurts, does it?… But do you think it hurts more than electrodes on your ears or having your nails ripped out with pliers? Don’t be selfish. Don’t just think about your own pain; think about what my pain was like when you really let yourselves go. If you’re not truthful, that’s too bad for you – I’ll crush your head with a stone!”

  A vile terror gripped Mathieu when he forced himself to nod his head in denial.

  “I’ll carry on then!”

  Stifling his sobs, Tahar went back to his methodical work, letting out Hah! and Heh! noises like a lumberjack and moans of pain when too sudden a movement revived the injuries the DOP had inflicted on him.

  Blows rained down on the prisoner, and Mathieu, haggard now and urinating under him without even noticing it, had the impression that an unbelievable multitude of creatures were screaming inside his head, each of them voicing a different version of his pain and his fear. The focus of this fear was the fell’s sorrow, which seemed to worsen with every blow he administered. Between two grunts that drowned out his sobs, the maquisard hurled insults, most of them in Arabic, others probably in French but rendered unintelligible by rage.

  An entreaty swept through Mathieu: “Dear God, I’m not a hero, prevent this murderer from killing me – I don’t want to die like this! Console him; make him stop. I’m sorry, don’t abandon me!”

  The beating ceased at dawn. But Mathieu didn’t know it. He had lost consciousness and only came to because something was tickling his face. The rodent that was sniffing at him – a kind of small field mouse – ran off at the sight of his furiously blinking eyes. Flies were buzzing around his lips, attracted by the clots of blood.

  His guard had removed his gag. I’m going to die in a stupid bid for freedom, he thought. Or maybe like some low-down, rabid dog instead. I’m already laid out like a corpse and no one will ever lift me up again. Or maybe I’m already dead and this is…

  From the moisture on his cheeks he knew that it was raining. He took little superstitious sniffs to curb his own morbid prophecies: deciding that he was dead was likely to ‘tempt’ reality. His eyes sought out the person who had reduced him to this state. His heart skipped a beat when he caught sight of the man’s legs above his head.

  “Now tell me why you made me escape.”

  A slight breeze had got up. Leaning against a tree trunk, his voice hoarse with fatigue, the man spoke calmly.

  “Are you going to finish me off?” the Frenchman asked resignedly.

  “I don’t know. You already stink like a corpse, but have I smashed your skull to a pulp? Have I driven a stake into your heart or up your arse? No… at least, not yet… So why are you in such a hurry to find out the future? Answer my question instead. And remember: I’m the one leading the interrogation this time, not you.”

  Mathieu knows that time is growing short and that these details are of no use to Aziz. But he has an almost physiological need for these confessions – the first he’s ever accorded to an Algerian, with the obvious exception of his friend Tahar. As great a need, he senses, as for the pills he’s been taking against heart trouble for some years.

  He told the man who had beaten him everything, and that ‘everything’ could be summed up in one word: shame – irresistible, corrosive, poisonous shame.

  “I realise that it’s ridiculous, that it’s hard to swallow, but that’s how it is. Forgive me. I…”

  He had stopped talking, unable to offer any reasons. A blush had come over his face, but luckily it was invisible in the darkness of the undergrowth. Tahar had listened to him in silence, with a thin, incredulous smile on his swollen face.

  “So one day,” he sighed, scratching his nose, “there was a knock! knock! knock! on the door of that torturer’s head of yours. You said: Who’s there! and someone or something answered: It’s me – morality! Can I come into your life?”

  He dissolved into a deeply insulting burst of laughter.

  “You think a single good deed is enough to wipe out all the dirty things you did to those men who passed through your hands? Sounds like you know a thing or two about bookkeeping!”

  A gasp of indignation shook Mathieu – and for a brief moment a mixture of anger and scorn overcame his fear.

  “And you really think you’re in a position to give me lessons on morals, do you, fucker? That fake informer’s little girl – what was her name again?”

  The man started. His face tensed instantly, as though he’d been slapped. He staggered to his feet, looked around for the pistol that had fallen from his lap, seized it and levelled it at the prisoner.

  “You… you…”

  His eyes raging, Tahar cocked the gun, bent a finger around the trigger and… burst out crying.

  Mathieu lay there stunned. The fellow who, one minute earlier, had been prepared to shoot him without any ceremony had brought his hands up to his face to hide the tears that were streaming down his drawn cheeks.

  “Hey, what’s got into you?”

  Tahar dried his eyes with the sleeve
of what remained of his shirt, muttering something that sounded like “Leave me alone, you idiot!”

  “I ne… never… wan… ted to kill anyone… I… Never… I’m not a… a…”

  Mathieu felt a strange sensation – a wish to console him? – spread insidiously through him at the sight of this man who had withstood so much torture and was falling to pieces now that he seemed to be in control of the situation. He left him to cry ugly great adult tears – and realised that his own eyes were growing moist.

  “That girl… I never laid eyes on her… I didn’t kill any children… That’s not what I joined the rebels for…”

  He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. He had hung his head, keeping his finger on the trigger of the pistol.

  “So who killed everyone in that mechta then?” muttered the Frenchman, choosing to ignore the pistol.

  “That wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out.”

  He gazed at his gun with an expression of such hatred, at once stubborn and lost, that Mathieu thought he was actually going to use it.

  “The villagers were pro-MNA. Some of them refused to feed FLN fighters or wouldn’t pay their dues. Others were informing the French army of our whereabouts; that kind of thing. We only meant to teach them a lesson… not kill them! That’s what our leaders had assured us – that we were only going to cure them of their taste for treachery, and give them a good thrashing if need be…”

  He picked up a stone and flung it at a tree.

  “In any case, that’s what I thought when we arrived in the douar.”

  The scene, as the old man would remember several decades later, was pretty unreal; tragic, because a human being was speaking about his part in a massacre; ridiculous, for the man who was greedily soaking up the other’s confidences was lying at his feet trussed up like a sausage. Lost in the middle of a forest of cork oaks, the two associates didn’t look good. One of them had tortured the other; the other had taken his revenge by beating him to a pulp all through the night. If some divine director exists, he must take great pleasure in such an unlikely reversal.