“What about you? Returning to France must have been really wrenching.”
Albouker gave her a sad little smile. The bags under his eyes swelled up like lungs.
“You see, you’ve just involuntarily illustrated the difficulty we have in explaining our unhappiness to metropolitans. You said ‘returning to France.’ But for us, there could be no return because we hadn’t ever been here! For the same reason, many former French of Algeria reject the term ‘repatriates’ that is often used to refer to us, because for them, their country was Algeria, not France. In any case, not this France . . . ”
He put his hand on Claire’s and tapped it gently.
“But to answer your question more precisely: it was more than wrenching for me, even more than a rupture, a genuine mourning.”
Gilles was listening to their conversation but trying to look elsewhere. He felt that Albouker would talk more freely with a woman.
“For me, there will always be a before and an after. I have the feeling that I was never the same after . . . after our departure. Oh, of course I’ve been happy here. I was able to pursue the studies I wanted, and I would probably not have been able to do that over there. I met a woman whom I love, I have children and a beautiful house. Nothing to complain about. Yes, I’ve been happy, but . . . ”
He took the time to find the right word to express the vague feeling that possessed him.
“Yes, I’ve been happy, but I think I’ve never again been . . . joyous. Yes, that’s it, joyous. Joyous and carefree. In fact, at the age of six I stopped being a child.”
He had been looking down at the table as he spoke, as if he were searching for his words and feelings among the scraps of food that stained the tablecloth. He raised his eyes and stared at Claire.
“You’re not Catalan?” he asked her abruptly.
“No, I was born in Yvelines.”
“Are you attached to your native region?”
“No, not really.”
“Then it will be impossible for you to understand our passion for Algeria. I believe that only people of Catalan origin can understand us. Because they, too, love their country, their culture, their language . . . ”
“Explain that to me.”
“That’s just it, it can’t be explained, it’s ineffable. One feels these things in the depths of oneself. They can’t be translated by words. Words aren’t strong enough. Words don’t convey feeling enough. I could tell you about Bab-El-Oued, the assemblies, the balls, the festivals—people took every opportunity to throw a party—but no matter what I said I don’t think my words would succeed in making you share anything at all. The only way to transmit something is through emotion. But when we Pieds-Noirs let ourselves be emotional, watch out! We get out of control, and right away it’s too much and it becomes laughable.”
“Ah, that marvelous wonderland that we’ve lost,” Marie Albouker broke in ironically.
Her husband discreetly wiped away a tear that was lingering in the corner of his eye. He also sighed, because he knew what was going to come next; they’d had this conversation countless times before.
“All Pieds-Noirs weren’t unhappy to leave Algeria, you know. For my mother, for instance, it was a liberation.”
Claire didn’t hide her surprise.
“You can’t imagine the archaic and macho side of Pied-Noir society back then,” Marie Albouker explained. “In that respect, our families were no better than the Arabs. My mother wanted to work, to have a job, but she was never able to do that. Not until she came to live in France.”
A new light shone in her eyes.
“And I will always remember the pleasure she took in shopping in the streets of Marseille, where we lived during the first years after Independence. She marveled at the slightest thing. I don’t think I ever heard her express any regret at having had to leave Algeria. Except perhaps at the very end of her life.”
“And you, how do you feel about it?”
“I have mixed feelings. Inevitably. It’s always been hard for me to find a position between my father’s sorrow and my mother’s relief, a relief that she took care not to express in front of her husband and her family. She talked about it only with me. But she often told me that I didn’t know how lucky I was to grow up in metropolitan France.”
“And what are your memories of Algeria?”
“There, too, I find it hard to talk about them. I was three years old in 1962. I’m not even sure that my memories are my own.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That I can’t distinguish the authentic memories from the recreated ones. People talked to me so much about Algeria—my father, my grandparents, my brothers, too; they were four and seven years older than I was. Every year, on the anniversary of our departure, my parents would get out the photo albums. They told stories and wept.”
Roger, who had been listening to the discussion for a few minutes, took the opportunity to put in his two cents.
“Yalla, my little lady, if you want someone to tell you about Algeria, you don’t want to ask these kids. I’m seventy-eight, and I was almost thirty when I left Algeria. So you can imagine that I had time to get to know it. I could tell you all about it, the excursions to the beach at Padovani or the one at Sidi Fredj. We spent whole weekends there. We set up our tent on the sand and caught fish for our dinner. We fished with the water up to our knees and we caught little fish that we took off the hooks and threw directly into the frying pan. The fish were still alive and flopped around in the oil; a little glass of rosé with that. With next to nothing, we made ourselves a paradise.”
He looked around at the other guests and smiled, delighted to have captured everyone’s attention.
“I’m permeated with that country down to the marrow of my bones. I’ll tell you, little lady, Algeria still runs in my veins. When I talk about it, all I have to do is close my eyes to hear it and smell it.” He closed his eyes and drew in a rapturous breath.
“The miserable thing is that I’m there . . . I’ve got my feet in the water, the waves are caressing my knees; I feel the fishing rod quiver, I set the hook, and the fish is caught. Bingo! I throw it to my buddies behind me and immediately I hear it frying in the pan. My pals have tossed spices on it. I can smell them as if I were there.”
His friend René sniggers:
“The spices are easy enough . . . with the remains of the couscous on the table, I can smell your spices even without closing my eyes.”
Roger smiled but went on, undeterred. He kept his eyes closed:
“I hand the rod to a pal and sit down on the sandy beach. The sand at Sidi Fredj is warm, I slip my feet in, it almost burns them. Somebody hands me an anisette in a glass with two big ice cubes. The pal to whom I gave the rod continues to angle and the fish pile up in the pan. The first ones are already cooked, and they’re as golden as wheat, appetizing, we’re hungry, we’re going to be able to start eating. One by one, we pick fish out of the pan . . . ”
“Watch out, it’s hot,” René joked.
“Yes, it’s hot and we pay attention,” Roger went on, speaking even more loudly. “But above all, it’s delicious. It’s no longer fish but velvet, I tell you, it’s silk, it’s . . . ”
“Hey, watch out for bones!”
“The fish in Algiers didn’t have bones, never. Algiers was paradise on earth, and moments like that were explosions of happiness. We watched the sun disappear over the horizon in the direction of the Strait of Gibraltar.”
“You had good eyes in those days,” René laughed. “Gibraltar is a long way off.”
This time Roger stopped and suddenly reopened his eyes.
“Damn, the guy’s just not going to stop. Obviously, poetry was never your strong point in Oran. Any more than calentita.”
“It’s not calentita, it’s calentica, I tell you!”
“An
d I’m telling you what I’m telling you and it’s the truth . . . ”
The two old men were resuming with shared pleasure a quarrel that seemed to have bound them together for years. Guy and Marie Albouker watched them indulgently.
“Have you never been tempted to go back there?” Claire asked.
Albouker glanced at his wife before deciding to reply:
“Of course we have. Many Pieds-Noirs have gone back. For better and for worse. Some of them have returned delighted, others completely depressed.”
“What about you? Don’t you want to go back there?”
“Our ‘back there’ no longer exists, it’s another country now. Our ‘back there’ now lives on only in us, and that’s the one that has to be preserved. I lived in Algeria for only the first six years of my life, and I have memories that are very strong but also very vague. I’m afraid that the images of it today might erase the ones from yesterday.”
“It might also be a way of healing the wound!”
Albouker held his hands out toward Claire and made a cross with his index fingers.
“Vade retro, Satanas.”
He put his hands back on the tablecloth as a shrill little laugh escaped his mouth.
“What did you say there, wretched woman? I don’t want to be healed. The Pied-Noir carries within him a deep and painful wound that is at the same time his strength, his cross, and his soul. He preserves this wound, he cherishes it, and he doesn’t want to lose it. That is exactly what many French people reproach us for. Because they don’t understand. They don’t know that if we were healed, not only our Algeria would disappear but also ourselves, I mean we would disappear as a community. That will happen soon enough, believe me. We exist only through the memories that we carry within us, but every year, those who lived in Algeria are fewer and fewer. It’s a little like old men in Africa; do you know the proverb?”
“Every time an old man dies, it’s a library that burns.”
“Precisely. Well, it’s the same with us: every time a Pied-Noir dies, part of our memory disappears, part of our history sinks into oblivion. In ten to twenty years we’ll all be dead and that will be the end of our community. That’s what I understood, I think, when my father died: I had to pick up the torch, transmit the heritage.”
Albouker tried to pour them some more wine but the bottle was empty. He had only to reach over and grab a full one, two guests farther on.
Marie Albouker put her hand on her husband’s shoulder and massaged it affectionately.
“I know somebody who’s not going to sleep again tonight,” she finally said. “Every time he talks about the approaching disappearance of the Pieds-Noirs, he can’t sleep. He was deeply affected by Bernard’s murder. One night this week he didn’t sleep a wink. He even went out for a walk, despite the rain.” She put her hand on her husband’s arm, who seemed to be embarrassed by her revelations.
“I understand,” Claire said with compassion. “I know somebody else who’s prone to insomnia: every time he has a case that’s hard to solve.”
Guy Albouker took advantage of the opportunity to change the subject:
“What a thing, that murder! And the vandalism, too . . . I heard that you have a lead?”
“No, I really can’t say that we do,” Sebag replied a little curtly.
“Oh? I thought you’d arrested someone,” Albouker persisted.
“We’re just carrying out routine questioning. For the moment, no one has been arrested, or even placed in police custody. It’s going to be a difficult case, I think.”
Silence fell around them. The whole group was waiting to hear what Sebag would say. It was a time to speak very carefully. But what should he say? He would have preferred to leave that role to the superintendent or the cabinet director: they had been trained for it.
“I think people shouldn’t panic. We have two isolated acts here. Their proximity is a disturbing coincidence but at this stage in the investigation, it’s still only a coincidence so far as we’re concerned.”
About twenty perplexed faces remained turned toward him. At the other end of the table, Jean-Pierre Mercier spoke up:
“Without violating the secrecy of the investigation, Lieutenant, I’d like you to tell us what we should think of a persistent rumor that’s been circulating for two days in the neighborhood.”
“Please tell me about it.”
The treasurers’ ceremonious tone made him uneasy.
“It’s said that the letters ‘OAS’ were found written on the walls of Bernard Martinez’s living room. Is that true?”
What should he reply to that? He quickly realized what he had to say: he’d been asked to reassure the members of the Pied-Noir community, and he decided he couldn’t do that by lying to them.
“It’s true, yes. More precisely, they were painted on a door.”
Exclamations all around the table. Half surprised, half angry.
“In an investigation there are always elements that the police keep secret,” Sebag said. “It’s a question of effectiveness. And sometimes, I admit, of diplomacy.”
“Then why do you continue to say that the murder has no connection with the destruction of the monuments?” Mercier demanded.
“Because the acts are not of the same nature, and the weapons used aren’t either. There is only the proximity of the events.”
“The connection with the OAS isn’t enough for you?”
“The same teams are working on both acts. We’re not excluding the hypothesis of a common perpetrator. We’ve put the maximum number of men on these cases, which are a priority for us because we are well aware of the emotion that they are going to arouse in the city.”
Gilles saw Claire looking at him with amusement. She knew he was a cop but was taking unconcealed pleasure seeing him play this role as a diplomat.
“What if the true connection wasn’t with the OAS but with the Pied-Noir community itself?”
Guy Albouker had spoken in a soft voice, but one that all the guests could hear. A shiver ran around the table. Sebag took this remark for a stab in the back.
“I know, you mentioned that concern on the telephone the other day. It seemed to me to be without foundation. It still does.”
“However, I find it credible,” René added. “Most of the little bastards who constantly oppose the things we try to do don’t make the distinction. For them, ‘OAS’ and ‘Pieds-Noirs” are synonyms.”
These remarks elicited general approbation. Sebag got up and handed out his card.
“You shouldn’t be excessively worried,” he tried to reassure them. “But I’m giving you the number of my cell phone. Never hesitate to call me.”
“Well, that promises to give you some sleepless nights,” Marie Albouker said to Claire.
“I’m afraid you’re right.”
“Insha’Allah! O.K., I’m going to get the pastries. That will cool down the atmosphere.”
She returned almost immediately with an immense tray covered with sweets that she listed with pleasure: gazelle horns, tcharek with dried figs, vanilla shortbread cookies, and many others whose names Gilles and Claire didn’t even try to remember. The hubbub soon became deafening, still mixed with laughs and shrieks. Sebag gave Marie Albouker a grateful smile.
Claire took advantage of this moment to take her husband’s hand under the table. She squeezed it very hard, at the same time looking elsewhere and seeming to be very interested in the conversation. Gilles pressed his thigh against hers and simultaneously smiled at another explosion of his neighbor Roger’s anger. He liked nothing better than these moments of intense intimacy. Alone in the world, the two of them amid the crowd. Then he imagined that Claire wasn’t his wife but his mistress, a secret liaison, unknown to all the guests around them.
But the moment was spoiled by a sudden nausea. He would so much have liked to per
suade himself that he’d always been her only lover. He felt Claire’s hand squeeze his even harder.
CHAPTER 18
The old man was driving slowly down the avenue bordering the long beach at Canet. The Mediterranean, normally so calm, was roaring under the driving rain and throwing up heavy, foamy waves onto the quiet sand. Battered by the wind off the sea, the high, straight palms flailed their torn arms as if they were trying to keep their balance. Before he arrived at the marina, he turned first to his left, then left again thirty meters farther on. He found a parking place and took it.
Now he had to wait.
A thick mist gradually covered the windows of his little car, hiding him from the eyes of the people who lived on the street. The car radio was playing golden oldies at low volume. The man massaged his painful hands. The Catalan autumn wasn’t a season for him.
His target lived in an opulent house in the residential quarter of Canet-en-Roussillon. Pink stuccoed walls, blue shutters, Mediterranean tile roofs, pink and red oleander hedges behind an unstuccoed wall. A little bit of paradise. Even with all this rain.
He kept his eyes on the big white gate, hardly a hundred meters in front of him. He was waiting for it to open.
His target was returning from a week’s vacation in Tunisia. He’d made an appointment with him before he left and they had agreed to meet as soon as he got back. He’d introduced himself under a false name and claimed that he was putting together a collection of testimonies on the French of Algeria, but he had at first met with an absolute refusal. He thought he’d understood that his target had just been approached by a historian making the same request and that he had rejected it.
He’d had to argue for a long time, but he’d finally succeeded by explaining that his work would not be a neutral history: he wanted to produce a militant book that would do justice to the courageous fighters for French Algeria.
“Come see me on Sunday morning, as soon as I return,” his target had agreed with a sudden enthusiasm. “My wife has to go to her yoga class. I prefer her not to be there: she doesn’t like me to talk about certain pages of our history.”
Autumn, All the Cats Return Page 15
