The Snow Kimono

by Mark Henshaw

  Sachiko has stopped talking. The trees have edged closer. Terror has finally found him out. The long journey is over. There is nowhere to go. No one to help him. He leans down into the sorrowing snow. To see if she is still breathing.

  Part VI

  JOVERT

  Chapter 29

  WHAT had Professor Omura said? We can only see our lives through the eyes of another. Did this include history? Hindsight?

  Jovert went to the Bibliothèque Nationale. He phoned ahead, to arrange to see their maps of Algiers.

  All of them? the woman on the other end of the line asked.

  He pictured her with the phone tucked under her chin—prim, efficient, glasses, early fifties. Her hair tied up. The type to tap her bundles of paper on the top of her pristine desk. Line them up. Tap, tap, tap. Squeeze the straightened pile in the middle.

  How many of them are there?

  Just a moment. He heard her fingernails skittering on the keyboard. She was talking to herself.

  Let-me-see…No, no, I won’t be a minute. I’m-on-the-phone. The exasperated ‘o’ arched like a playing card. Merde. Ask Gilles…I don’t know. What time is it? For God’s sake, under her breath. Here we go. Hmm…There are—eight hundred and seventy-nine. Yes. Now a tiny three-point rapier flash: 8–7–9… Inspector?

  That many?

  Merde? Okay. Younger. Early thirties? Yes, definitely, he could hear it in her voice now. Maybe even younger.

  Yes, that many. What, precisely, are you after?

  He told her. He was looking for maps of the inner city. The Kasbah. The streets just east of it. The harbour. Preferably from the fifties. And, if they had any, something more recent. From the eighties—1985. Or last year, perhaps. To compare.

  Algeria: 1958–59

  That March morning, the light in the harbour had been blinding. Madeleine had lain in their cabin. Still sick. Or sick again. She had spent the last twenty-six hours crouched over the toilet, her head on her arm, throwing up.

  Oh God, she had said. More than once. And he had knelt down beside her. His hand on her back, rubbing her shoulders.

  Oh God, oh God.

  And her back would arch again.

  It’s okay, Auguste. You should try and get some sleep. I’ll be all right.

  His knees ached from kneeling. He thought of his six months training in Dien Bien Phu. What it felt like to be tortured. You have to know, their commander had said. Kneeling forward. Bent over, hands tied behind their backs. The weighted helmet on their heads. Another kilogram. The sharpened twin-tined bamboo spikes beneath their necks mercifully capped. But it hurt. It hurt so badly you screamed. You wanted to die. Until, in the end, your muscles—there were so many you didn’t know you had—collapsed. You begged. Help me. Help me. Oh God, please, please. Get me up!

  The competition between them fierce. How long could each of them last before they gave up their secret word?

  Or suspended upside down. Hands tied behind their backs. The madness set in train. Their manacled ankles ratcheted apart. Until they were sure they were going to be torn in two. Because this time they didn’t stop, even when you begged. Instead, they left you alone. To think: Had something ghastly happened? Had they forgotten you? Accidents did happen. They all knew that.

  Later, you would see the film.

  It was worse if you’d had breakfast first. With its tasteless supplement undeclared. Today’s exercise is…Without telling you. That took half an hour before it took effect, before your guts began to churn.

  No, you don’t need to change. Yet.

  The laughter nervous.

  God, what now?

  Only five got through to the next phase.

  Some didn’t last. Were never the same.

  Oh God, she says again.

  The ship’s doctor came to see her, twice.

  Madame Jovert, Capitaine.

  How many months pregnant was she? Five. The middle of the second trimester. Had she ever been seasick before? Jovert noted the assumption. He meant, on her previous trips home.

  Was it obvious she was not French, but French-Algerian? She didn’t have an accent. If she did, he’d know. He was an expert in that kind of thing. The best in his class. Madeleine had lived in Marseille most of her life, had studied there. Her skin was no darker than anyone else’s from the south. The epidermal texture no different.

  Maybe it was her eyes. The thing about her he loved most. Some tiny genetic inflection. Their shape? Colour? Their deep aquatic green? But you had to be close to her to see that.

  The afternoon on their first day was the worst. The storm that had been building all morning finally delivered up its wrath. The ferry began to heave, to make its endlessly repeated slow ascent up the face of each oncoming wave, each one steeper than the last, to balance briefly at the top, before the apex sideways-twisting roll, the vertiginous descent. Into the next trough. A tiny calm. Then, the same slow climb again.

  The doctor would not prescribe her anything. A palliative. Which only made her worse.

  He heard the toilet flush again.

  The night before they left, he imagined them standing on the deck together, his arm on her shoulder, the sea air fresh, watching the approaching city. But now it was only him.

  He remembered the morning calm on deck, Algiers on the horizon, raising his hand to shade his eyes. The whitewashed walls of the houses impastoed onto the surrounding hills concentrated the light like a lens, pinning the ferry to the coruscated sea like a tiny upturned beetle. Exhausted, half-dead, still struggling on its back. The reflected light an invisible membrane, keeping the tiny ferry at bay. He felt the slow harmonic rise and fall of the engines beneath his feet. They were yet to find their way in.

  A departing tanker passed so closely it was like a moving wall. It loomed over him, blocking out the sun. He watched the repeated pattern of its welded plates, the twin hemline of rivets above the surging waterline a racing blur. He felt dizzy, the churning water reaching out to pull him in. He pushed against the railing with his hands. He saw the broken line of tankers stretching dreamlike out behind him towards the horizon. All escaping back to Marseille.

  And then they were there. An invisible wave of harbour stench washed over him: diesel fumes, sea-ditched refuse, rotting fish, vegetables, sweat, excrement—donkey, human, who knew what else; the smell of burning rubber. All concentrated by the governing sun into its lush constituents, pungent, caustic, inescapable. It would seep down the gangways now, and into the corridors, the passageways; it would seep under every closed door, into the holds, the engine room, into every cavity, every blameless empty space.

  And there was something else, a delicate hint of something sweet, like an aftertaste floating on the air. A note from somewhere past. A memory. Bastille Day. The night sky twitching. Fireworks exploding. The echoing scent of cordite.

  Madeleine came up from her cabin to find him. She saw him at the rail. She went to stand with him. Leant unsteadily against his arm, strands of her long hair twisting about her face in the breeze.

  I heard the engines slow, she said. I knew we must be here. Then I s
melt the harbour.

  How are you feeling now? he said. He put his hand up to her face.

  I think there’s nothing left, she said. But the memory of her night turned her away. She dry-retched over the side.

  Oh dear, she said. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, inspected the thin moist smear.

  See, there’s nothing left.

  Maybe you shouldn’t have come up. Why don’t you go back down? We’ll be there in ten minutes.

  No, she said. The cabin’s unbearable now.

  She looked pale, exhausted. He glanced down to where the breeze was circling her body. He could see the impress of her dress, the small bow of her growing belly.

  You’re beginning to show, he said.

  I know.

  She held the fabric against her stomach with her splayed fingers.

  There’s no going back, is there? she said, half-smiling.

  She put a hand up to shield her eyes. Didn’t you say that there would be someone waiting for us?

  Yes, he said. After we’ve been through passport control.

  I don’t see anyone, she said.

  He had already scanned the wharf himself. There will be, he said. We should go down and pack.

  I’ve already done it, she said.

  He turned towards her.

  What else was I to do?

  And then she said something he would never forget: Home, she said, looking up at the looming city. I can hardly wait.

  The engines gave one last fitful rumble, churned briefly, then died away. The deck stilled with a half-hearted heave.

  So, this is it, he said.

  This is it, Madeleine said. She took a breath. This is it.

  Passport. The French civil service—they had forgotten how uncivil it could be. But who knew where allegiances lay these days, now the war had begun. The black-capped face looked at Madeleine’s passport, her photograph, at her. Tapped the folded passport on his palm. Handed it back. Took Jovert’s. Jovert saw him hesitate. The registering of his name. Thank you. Sir. But the cap did not look up, its uniformed arm was already reaching out for the passport behind him.

  It was young Thibaud who had been assigned to him. He was, as had been arranged, waiting for them on the wharf, standing by the car. Jovert carried their two suitcases.

  God, I can’t believe how much it’s changed, she said. She took his arm unsteadily. So, mon capitaine, what do you think?

  He surveyed the white arc of houses that stretched up the hillside around him.

  It’s not Marseille, he said. But I can see what people mean, about the light.

  They were almost at the car.

  Thibaud stepped forward, his hand out.

  Good to see you again, sir, he said.

  But when he saw the look on Jovert’s face, his hand dropped. Jovert reached out. Took Thibaud’s hand in his.

  Good to see you, Corporal Thibaud. Permit me to introduce you. Thibaud, this is my wife—Madeleine, ma chère, Corporal Thibaud.

  Madame. Thibaud inclined his head. Jovert could almost hear the faint click of his heels.

  Thibaud had already read the unexpected news the breeze brought with it. At least he was thinking now.

  Here, let me take your bag, Madame.

  No, it’s fine. Thank you, Corporal, she said. I’m happy to keep this one with me.

  You can help me with these, Corporal, Jovert said.

  He was at the rear of the car. He was smiling. Two suitcases at his feet.

  Thibaud went to open the boot. Picked up the bags. Merci. You’re welcome, sir.

  Then they were on their way, across the clattering wooden wharf, and up through the maze of streets to the house which awaited them, the one he had inspected, the one he had prepared for them, three months before.

  In the library, Jovert begins to retrace the route they had taken from the wharf, or, at least, the one he thinks they took, up through the tangle of the streets to the house they had shared, worked in, lived in, made love in, died in, during those fateful fifteen months, thirty years earlier.

  And so begins the process of prompting, probing, of resisted stimulation, to force his memory to surrender what he has spent decades trying to forget.

  He knows what he has to do. Even if it breaks him.

  Memory, he had once believed, was our real refuge. It was who we were. What we returned to. A somehow sacred place. Our cells might die, be replaced, but not their secret synaptic codes. That was the paradox. Memories were our sanctuary. What bound us to each other. But he knew now that that was an illusion. Memories could change, be destroyed, be rewritten.

  Now, in the library, he would remember. He would force himself to recall all the pain, to give up those things he wished he could have left buried. He would overcome his own resistance. After all, how many nameless people had he helped in the past to do just this? How many people, struggling against inescapable odds, had he helped to see clearly? To recall things they might have otherwise forgotten. Or said they had.

  No, he knew he could do this. He had always had this gift. He knew every trick in the book. Had invented some. It was why they had chosen him. So he sat there, in the vast space of the Bibliothèque, looking at the maps spread in front of him. Two from 1955. One from 1988.

  She was even younger than he had imagined, the woman on the other end of the phone. Twenty-four, maybe. Six. Welcoming—Ah, Inspector. The smile friendly. Her teeth perfect, dazzling. Helpful. Even her glasses were chic.

  Not far now, Thibaud says. Down the narrow worn-stepped alleyway. Thibaud behind them, carrying one of their suitcases.

  Here, this is it.

  The house lay hidden behind a high white wall. An arched wooden gate painted blue. Thibaud’s hand on the black wrought-iron latch. Convolvulus. The portico blue. His memory hurries him through to the balcony off their bedroom where the two of them, he and Madeleine, are standing, looking down over the flat white rooves that lie before them, a pile of fallen white dominoes, to the still, blue harbour below. To the north, the naval docks; to the south, the Terre-plein spit; the squat lighthouse in between.

  He pulled the map closer. Where exactly had the house been? Young Thibaud, who would be killed in an ambush a month after Jovert left, had stopped the car…here.

  He marked the position with his finger. Drew an imaginary line towards the spit.

  Later their luggage would arrive. Four shrouded Arabs suddenly in the courtyard, sitting there as quiet as assassins. Smoking. The gate still open.

  From the balcony, the dockyards. Nearby, the Villa les Tourelles. He holds his fingers out. A reverse trigonometry. He draws a small circle on the map with his fingertip. He leans down. Tries to prise the streets apart. But the map resists. It won’t give up its secrets that easily to him.

  He remembers the hundreds of aerial-surveillance photographs he had had at his disposal at the Villa les Tourelles, where his best work was done. If only he now had access to these. But that was impossible. Even if he had still been with the Special Operati
ons Branch, he could never have got to them. That part of his life had been wiped clean. What had his contact said to him when he had asked after Haifa, the warning clear? I thought that was ancient history.

  The house is off rue des Oiseaux, Thibaud says. They are in the car again. Thibaud. Madeleine. Driving up from the port.

  You’re lucky, the house faces east. You can see the old port from the balcony. He pulls the car up around another bend. Only to be trapped by a truck on the narrow broken cobble-stoned street in front of them. The truck—old, blue-canopied, dirty—almost stops. The gear change makes him wince. A river of half-dreamed men appears about the car. Sleeping, sun-drugged dogs. Children staring.

  It’s about a fifteen-minute walk to the harbour. There are gardens nearby.

  He is standing on the balcony with Thibaud. The sound of retching comes to him from the bathroom.

  Your wife might find them comforting. There is a small viaduct off rue St Augustin. A pharmacy on Place Randon, run by an Arab who trained in Paris. Here, here it is. Just above his crescent-fingered nail. Place Randon! Perhaps you should see him—get something for your wife.

  Memories, shuffled, reshuffled from his past.

  The first night, after their frugal meal, untouched by Madeleine, he told her.

  I have to go out, he said. I don’t know what time I’ll be back.

  Already?

  Already. There is something I have to attend to.

  He leaned down, kissed her on the forehead.

  Will you be all right?

  I’ll be fine, Auguste. Don’t worry. Fatima’s here. Tilde is calling by later.