‘Shut up, Lacroix.’
The big man went back to his work with a chuckle.
With trembling fingers, Mohand took a grip of the tumbler. He had just attempted to corrupt an official of the colony. This action could earn him, at best, another five years onto his sentence or, at worst, a trip to the guillotine. This wasn’t just any official; this was the head of the judiciary in this colony. If word ever got out, Judge Kathari would have no option but to protect his reputation and that of his wife. He held the tumbler to his mouth and tipped it back.
He was not worried about Ameena or the judge. He was more worried that he had been seen leaving their house at such an unusual time. If this were to get out, the couple would be forced to come up with a viable reason. They were an honourable pair and would not find it easy to lie.
That evening, he was sick. He attempted to eat, but everything he put in his stomach forced itself back out. His fear turned into a strong fever. He spent the whole night wrapped in his thin cotton sheets, shivering. He could not throw the fear from his mind or the crazy thoughts it encouraged. He would be caught. The couple would be disgraced. Someone would say they were having an affair and, to save his wife’s reputation, Judge Kathari would be forced to say what actually happened. As soon as this was known, Mohand would be marched to the guillotine.
Dark thought after dark thought crowded his mind and clawed at his conscience.
The next day was interminably long. Distracted, he could achieve nothing and drew worried glances from his office staff. He counted each minute as it wound its way round the large clock on the far wall. The news would come soon. The gendarmes would come for him any second.
The day passed without incident and Mohand spent the night in much the same position as he had the one before. The next day passed in the same pattern. One of his office workers worked up the courage to ask him what was wrong and, for his trouble, received an order to carry out one of the least popular jobs in the office.
The next day was exactly the same. Uneasiness fluttered in his chest every time someone spoke to him. Each time someone with a uniform walked towards him, it was all he could do not to hold his hands forward, waiting for a set of manacles to be locked onto his wrists.
On the third day, he saw Aissa walking towards him from afar. Immediately, his mind threw up the worst possible outcome, until he got closer and Mohand could see a large smile on his face.
When he reached Mohand, Aissa embraced him and kissed him on the cheeks many more times than usual. During this performance, his voice was high with joy.
‘He was freed this morning, Mohand. He was freed.’
Mohand held Aissa by the shoulders. ‘Good, I am glad,’ he said. Relief washed over him. If he hadn’t a good hold of Aissa, he was sure that his legs would have given out and he would have crumpled to the floor.
‘I don’t know how to thank you for saving my brother.’ A tear washed its way down Aissa’s face.
‘Your thanks are enough, my brother,’ said Mohand.
‘The judge is a wonderful man. I didn’t know that these people could be so…’ He searched for a word.
‘Tell me, what happened,’ asked Mohand.
‘Arezki was freed this morning. Just before his release was announced, the judge came to see me. He said that he was a man of reason and if my brother was arrested unjustly, we should not worry. Then without another word, he returned the gold dust and left the room.’
TEN
A Letter
A guard was handing letters around the office. As usual, Mohand ignored him, his face aimed at his papers. He became aware that the guard had stopped in front of him. Mohand looked up.
With a smile David Faber held forward a small brown square of folded paper.
‘It has your name on it,’ Faber stated as if he was talking to a child. ‘It’s a letter from your home.’
Mohand simply stared at him. Home. He didn’t have a home.
‘You’re from Algeria, aren’t you?’
Obeying a neural impulse he wasn’t aware of, Mohand managed to hold out a hand. A letter from home. He felt his legs weaken. He didn’t know if he could open it. He had spent all this time constructing a protective barrier against thoughts of home and family and it was shattered in seconds.
‘Oh, and the director wants to see you in his office,’ said the guard, patting Mohand on the shoulder. ‘Now.’
The guard was about five hundred yards away before Mohand moved. He simply stared at the envelope. Then he read it. Strangely, it was not addressed to him but to the director of the prison.
Should he find a match and burn it? Could he read it? Or destroy it. His mind presented opposing arguments. His gut roiled. Reminders of home were nothing but a quick route to the sanitarium or a short hop into the dark maw of the jungle.
However… his heart longed for words from his homeland.
After this long silence from Algeria, his heart and a burning curiosity were too strong to resist. Before he knew it, he was pulling the letter from the inside of the envelope.
He started reading.
…we hunger for news of our sons. The world is a difficult place now but we would take strength knowing that our three menfolk still draw breath under the same sun…
The letter was penned in the careful script of Caid Mezaine, who surely must be nearly one hundred years old. Its contents, rather than pleasing him, worried him. The family had written to the prison authorities desperate for information. They didn’t know that Arab and Ali were dead. His gut twisted at the impact this news might have on his family back home.
He could not and would not be the one to tell them.
By the time he arrived at the director’s office, a cold anger burned in his stomach.
‘Did you read the letter from home?’ the director asked.
‘Yes.’ Mohand paused. Anger would get him nowhere. He took a deep calming breath. ‘I am surprised to hear that they have never been informed of the deaths of Ali and Arab.’
The director chose to ignore the tone of Mohand’s inquiry. ‘Do you want me to inform them?’
‘Of course I do. This should be the responsibility of the authorities.’ By now Mohand was completely uncaring of how he might be perceived.
The director nodded as if considering the idea for the first time. ‘You are right, convict, your family should have been informed of this. I will correct this omission. In the meantime, I want you to start writing home. I can’t have families writing to me demanding news of our prisoners.’ He studied Mohand from the other side of the desk. ‘Is this too much to ask?’
Mohand laughed, taken aback by the director’s request.
‘Sir, it’s been a long time since I wrote home. I have no idea what to say.’
He looked Mohand in the eyes and said, ‘Just write anything that comes to your mind.’
Mohand stepped back from the director’s desk, his mind working on the thought. What would he say? What on earth would they want to know about his experience in the prison? He thought about the great excitement that would surely take hold of everyone when they crowded around Caid Mezaine, waiting for him to give voice to the script on the page. He imagined eager smiling faces. Old and young alike, holding their breath.
Who was he to deny them this moment of happiness?
‘I will write a letter today.’
As he walked back to his office, his mind was crowded with words that he might say. Sentences jostled for his attention and each of them were quickly dismissed. Everything that suggested itself to him was summarily dismissed. It all seemed so small. So meaningless. So ineffective. He wanted to communicate with them, but what did he want to say?
Should he talk about the actions of his day? Would they want to know about the few real friends he had? The monotony of his world, the small amount of privilege he had earned and how quickly it might be taken away from him would be difficult to articulate on the page.
Once in his office, he pulled a cr
isp piece of white paper from a drawer and placed it on the desk before him. The clean space before him was daunting. How to best fill it? He quickly scratched the date on the top right hand corner, like an act of defiance, before he lost his courage.
Should he mention the fact that the bagne had been ruled illegal and a law passed to ensure its closure? All these months after hearing this news and still they were no closer to being released. The French seem to have a singular talent at ignoring their own laws.
With pen poised to write, he stopped. What was the point? He was surely going to die in this cursed place. But still, he was determined he should write something.
After all this deliberation he placed a pen on the page and wrote without thought, allowing his sub-conscious mind to decide what he should communicate. When he lifted the pen, there were five words in the middle of the page.
On vit et on espère
He spoke the words out loud – ‘We live and hope’ – and folded the page. His words were apt. That was the only thing that could clearly explain how he felt. All he had was hope. He went on waking in the morning, working one leg before the other into his prison-issue uniform and pouring all of his energy into his work while hoping that at some time in the future he might have a life that would not be dictated to him by the rhythm and needs of such an establishment.
With a delicate touch, he placed the paper inside an envelope as if he hoped his attention and love would filter from the paper into the hearts and minds of the people who read and heard his message.
Once the envelope was addressed, he dropped it in the prison letterbox. Before he let it go, he almost plucked it back out. For the briefest of moments he examined his motivation. He hoped fervently that the family did not decide to reply. He did not want to read any news from home. He did not want to know how they were suffering, as they would surely be, during this period of worldwide conflict. He would only feel worse knowing there was nothing he could offer by way of assistance.
Again he determined that this was the last time he would ever write home. And the last time he would ever open a letter sent from home. He bit down on his lower lip and choked back on a tear. It was better for him to forget that he had a family or a past. There was only now, this moment that he must endure.
There could be nothing else.
ELEVEN
Thoughts of Freedom
It was spring of 1945 and thanks to stolen moments with a radio, Mohand was aware that the Soviets had pushed the Germans before them, from the Vistula in Poland to the Oder River in Germany. Rumour grew on rumour. Ears were buzzing every night down at Lacroix’s bar, as the libérés and prisoners alike fed their hunger for supposition, guesswork and hope.
Hope lit in every man’s chest with every passing day. The war was being won by the Allies. Those who stood for freedom were coming out on top and surely that energy would carry through to the French administration.
‘The French will surely come to their senses and close this place once and for all.’ That was the opinion that Mohand heard voiced every day. The mood among the convicts was as positive as Mohand had ever experienced it. Gossip and guesses were never good enough for him. He had to hear it from a reliable source, so he visited his Chinese friend with a view to buying a radio. Ownership of such an item would have led to a serious reprimand so he hid the radio in a under a loose board in his room. Mohand would sit in his room after an evening with his few friends at the bar and, with his small second-hand radio pressed to his ear, listen to news bulletin after news bulletin about the war as it raged all over the globe.
Months later and the war was still being fought. Freedom was less certain, but hope still burned in hearts of the bagnards.
With his radio, Mohand learned on 12th April that the American president, Roosevelt, died. Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans on 28th April and two days later Hitler shot himself.
In May of that year, it was announced that the Germans had surrendered. That night, the celebrations at Lacroix’s bar were loud, with many of the men spending their last few sous on a jug of tafia.
Mohand thought that this must spell the end of the war, and surely the end of the war would mean the French would eventually close the bagne?
He gathered his meager belongings on top of his bed. Two pairs of trousers, a shirt and some socks. They were clean and still in good shape, with only a few holes in the fabric where the seams had worn over time. He found some needle and thread and worked into the small hours over a number of evenings to repair them. If freedom was coming, he wanted to look his best.
Despite the surrender of the Germans, the Japanese continued fighting. Hope was dampened by Japan’s refusal to capitulate. News then filtered through of events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The men stumbled over the thought of that for days. Two full cities had been wiped from the face of the Earth. The idea that a bomb possessed enough energy to snub out all those lives and to cause so much destruction was beyond their comprehension.
Eventually, Mohand heard that on 2nd September, 1945, Japan had surrendered.
Lacroix’s bar was crowded that night. Men jostled for elbow room in the small space. Tafia was ordered by the jug. Every mouth gripped a cigarette. Voices were raised with hope and expectation. The end of the war could surely mean only one thing?
Cigarette smoke hung in the air like the ghosts of those who had failed to combat the dangers of the bagne while men talked about friends who had died.
Mohand was leaning over his wooden tumbler, elbows resting on the table, watching his friends as they drank. He tried to remember both Armand and Simone as they were when he first came across them. Studying them, it appeared that Armand had had the hardest time. He was all bone and gristle, his cheeks sunken due to constant hunger and a lack of teeth. However, the change in Simone was more profound. Sure, in a health comparison with Armand, he would win, but there was a haunted acceptance in the slant of his shoulders and the tremor of his occasional smile.
How about his own appearance? He had aged as well, would his family recognise him?
Mohand considered Simone’s muted reaction to the news. When did this happen? When did his friend become so beaten up by this place that he all but gave in?
He felt irritation rise. He reached across and gripped Simone’s forearm.
‘Freedom. It’s so close I can smell it,’ Mohand said.
‘Your nose is too near your arse, my friend,’ Simone answered and took a quick sip of his drink.
‘You don’t believe that the end of the war will bring freedom for all of us?’ Mohand could feel any concern at his friend’s demeanor vanish from his mind. He wanted this dream of hope so much he couldn’t bear it that his friend didn’t agree with him.
‘I believe in what I have in front of me, Mohand.’ He picked up his tumbler and offered it to the air in front of him. ‘I believe in this shot of tafia.’ He pulled at his left cheek.
‘I believe in the dry and droopy skin on my face. I believe I will die in this place.’ He patted Armand on the shoulder. ‘I also believe that Armand’s penis has withered to the size of a button from lack of use.’
‘Hey…’ Armand protested. ‘I’m just sitting here minding my own business.’ He paused a beat and then offered a toothless grin. ‘But you are right, it is withered.’
‘This is shit,’ Mohand said, jumping to his feet. No one was as surprised as he at how quickly his anger had risen. ‘Look at you…’ he pointed at Simone. ‘You’ve all but given in.’
‘C’mon, Mohand,’ Armand said, reaching up and tugging at his sleeve. ‘Have a seat. Let’s not have anger among friends.’
‘Friends, pah. Friends would not…’ Hot with irritation, he pulled his arm from Armand’s grip. ‘Give up and the French have won.’ He turned away, but not before he caught the wounded look on Armand’s face. But his anger demanded more fuel and would not allow him to seek conciliation yet.
‘Look at this.’ Mohand jerked his shirt open
with such force a button popped off. ‘This eagle is free and one day so will I be.’
Armand studied the eagle tattoo as if he had never seen it before. Simone’s eyes slid off Mohand’s chest on to the floor.
‘Freedom is an illusion, my friend,’ Simone said. ‘No one is free. Look at the guards, the libérés, even the indigenous people of this shithole. We are all prisoners of one kind or another.’ His eyes now drilled into Mohand’s. His pupils were large black dots of hopelessness. ‘You’d think after all these years here a clever man like yourself would have learned that particular lesson.’ He laughed. A quick sharp note that sounded more like a bark. He drained his tumbler.
‘You are crazy if…’ Mohand began.
‘No. You are the crazy one.’ Simone jumped to his feet. They were now face to face, glaring at each other. Simone pushed a hand in to his pocket and pulled out a coin. He placed it on his palm and displayed one side and then the other.
‘Heads or tails. Hope and despair. Two sides of the same coin, Mohand. And you continually change from one state to the other. That, my friend is crazy. To stay sane in this place, you need to kick hope into the corner and ignore it. Better still fling it into the latrine and piss on it.’
Mohand would not allow himself to hear the truth in Simone’s voice and the words that he had often thought and said himself. To retain some sort of sanity in this place, a man needed to forget that he had any chance of another life. The luxury of a dream was the quickest route to an unhinged mind. He knew this. He had told himself this on numerous occasions. However, today, he would not, could not, listen to this reasoning. He would be free.
‘No one, least of all a man’s best friend, should pour piss on his dreams,’ he said and then turned to leave the room.
‘Mohand. Simone. You two are friends. Don’t argue like this.’
The Guillotine Choice Page 32
