The Angels Die

by Yasmina Khadra

  ‘I was waiting just for you, Turambo. I can’t move my arm. Put your hand on mine, please. I have to talk to you.’

  Whenever I saw her, I felt just as sorry for her. To have to lie down day and night, every day and every night, year in, year out, to depend on other people even for your most private needs: nobody deserved such indignity. Madame Ramoun was nothing but a crucified soul beneath a heap of wild flesh, like an unhappy saint trapped in her own contrition, and I could see no rhyme or reason to her suffering.

  ‘I love you like my son, Turambo. You’re more than a friend to Gino, more than a brother. From the first time I saw you, I knew you were the twin my son never had. Gino is a good person. He never harms anyone, and we live in unforgiving times. You’re younger than him, but I see you as older. And that reassures me. I want you to take care of Gino.’

  ‘Mother, please,’ Gino said.

  ‘Why do you say that, Madame Ramoun?’

  ‘Because I’m going. And I want to go in peace. I have nothing on my conscience, but I’m leaving an orphan behind me. I want to be sure he’ll be in good hands.’

  ‘Is she sick?’ I asked Gino.

  ‘She’s rambling. She’s been like this since midday. I called the doctor; he said there’s nothing wrong. I don’t understand why she thinks she’s dying. I’ve been trying to reason with her, but she won’t listen to me.’

  ‘There are things a doctor doesn’t see,’ his mother said. ‘Things only those who are going feel. My feet are freezing and the cold is spreading to the rest of my body.’

  ‘No, Mother, you’re imagining things.’

  ‘Put your hand on mine again, Turambo, and swear to me that you’ll take care of my son.’

  Gino signalled to me to agree.

  I swallowed, my throat tight with emotion.

  ‘Will you take care of him as you take care of yourself?’

  ‘Yes, Madame Ramoun.’

  ‘I don’t want anything to come between you, not money, not women, not your careers, not temptation.’

  ‘Nothing will come between us.’

  ‘I’ll be looking down on you, Turambo.’

  ‘I’ll look after Gino and won’t let any serpents come between us.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘I swear.’

  She turned to Gino and said to him in Italian, ‘Fetch me your father.’

  ‘Mother …’

  ‘Please, Gino.’

  Gino went to his room and came back with a framed photograph of a turbaned infantryman smiling at the camera and puffing at a cigarette. He was young, handsome, fine-featured and dark-skinned. The photograph had turned yellow in places and had scratches which, fortunately, had spared the soldier’s face.

  ‘Was he an Arab?’ I asked Gino.

  ‘He was my father, that’s all,’ he replied, irritated by my stupid question.

  He placed the photograph on the chair next to the bedside table, so that his mother had it facing her. Madame Ramoun gazed for a long time at her husband’s picture. She smiled, sighed, smiled again, and raised her eyebrows in an expression of tenderness while a thousand memories flashed before her eyes. Everything in her was asking for forgiveness. She’d had enough of being confined to her sarcophagus of flesh. Without her faith, she would doubtless have put an end to her life ages ago, but there was that fear of the Last Judgement, that horrible deadline that raises its finger to warn you against yourself, that keeps you in purgatory while promising you hell if you try to get out of it. I had often asked myself what I would do in her position; not once had I come up with an answer. I had simply watched the poor woman sink into the quicksand of her body, like someone watching the misery of the world making a spectacle of itself on every street corner. There was nothing else to do.

  ‘And now, read to me a little, Gino … No, not the Bible,’ she said, clasping the holy book tighter to her chest. ‘I prefer Edmond Bourg. Reread Chapter thirteen to me, the passage where he talks about his wife …’

  Madame Ramoun closed her eyes and let her son’s penetrating voice lull her. Gino read Chapter thirteen to her. As his mother didn’t react, he went on to the next chapter. Madame Ramoun shifted in her sleep and moved her finger, begging her son to go back and reread, over and over, the same chapter that the author devotes to his wife. It was a moving passage in which Edmond Bourg asked his wife for forgiveness.

  Madame Ramoun died a few hours later, the Bible over her heart and her eyes filled with a serene light. First, she heaved a sigh, opened her eyes to take one last look at her son and smiled at him, then, happy, freed from the chains of her body, as light as the first thrill of her romance, she turned to the photograph propped up on the chair and said, ‘You took your time coming for me, my love.’

  Gino and I looked for a carpenter to make us a coffin; those offered by the undertakers were no match for the dead woman’s size. It was hot and we had to be quick about it to avoid the corpse decomposing.

  Gino’s worst fears were realised. More than the mourning itself, it was the removal of the body that was a particularly gruelling ordeal for my friend. It was impossible to get the corpse out through the main door. She was too obese, and too heavy for the bearers.

  Volunteers from the neighbourhood came to help. There was such a crowd that the tram couldn’t get through. What’s going on? the passengers asked, leaning over the guardrail. Apparently a woman died … Did the building collapse on her? No, they’re knocking down the wall to get her out … Are you joking? Everyone stared at the men making a big hole in the wall around the window of the dead woman’s room.

  Gino was devastated at the spectacle afforded by his mother’s funeral. He always preferred to be discreet and now he was on display to all and sundry like some kind of circus freak.

  After knocking down the front of the house, the volunteers started erecting scaffolding with the help of ropes, pulleys and beams. A stonemason with a stitched forehead cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted instructions. The coffin, as big as a Norman dresser, was tied firmly and, to cries of Now hoist!, some dozen men starting pulling on the ropes while others, on the balcony, guided the load to avoid it crashing into the wall.

  The chaos that day was unbelievable.

  When the coffin emerged through the hole in the wall and swayed over everyone’s heads, the crowd held their breath. In the general silence, the only sound was the creaking of the pulleys. The coffin was lowered with extreme caution and laid on a cart. The funeral cortège set off immediately, drawing dozens of onlookers in its wake.

  In the streets, people stopped as the hearse went by; some took off their hats, others, sitting at café tables, rose obsequiously to their feet. Boys emerged from the thickets and trees where they were playing hide and seek, stopped their games of pignols or put off till later the errands they had been given and came to swell the cortège, suddenly silent and solemn, while housewives jostled one another on the balconies and rooftops, their children clinging to their skirts. An old madman who looked like Rasputin came and placed himself at the front of the cortège, foaming at the mouth, eyes popping out of their sockets. He pointed at the hearse, then at the sky, and shook his unruly hair from side to side, crying, ‘This is a warning. We’ll all die one day. What we think we possess is only an illusion. We’re merely the fleeting links in a chain dragged by a ghost named Time heading straight for nothingness.’ He was in a trance. Policemen had to step in and get him out of the way.

  Gino kept his head down.

  I took his hand; he pulled it away quickly and hurried on, wanting to be alone.

  We buried Madame Ramoun in the Christian cemetery.

  It was a terribly sad day.

  Misfortunes never come singly. When one rears its head, a whole tribe appears in its wake, and the descent into hell begins in earnest.

  It was a religious holiday and I was just getting ready to go with Gino to the beach at Kristel, where my friend had got into the habit of taking refuge since his mother�
��s death, when a gleaming car, driven by an Arab driver, stopped outside our house in Rue du Général-Cérez. In no time at all, kids appeared from the nearby alleys and started swarming around that gem on four wheels, fascinated by so much technology and refinement.

  Who was that fat lady who looked like a sultana, being helped out of the car by two servants? Who were those women glittering with jewels and silk, and where were they taking those trays loaded with gifts and beribboned cakes? What was the meaning of those loud ululations, the excitement that had gripped our courtyard?

  Nobody had told me, and I hadn’t seen it coming.

  It was like a guillotine blade falling without any warning.

  Nora’s a wonderful girl, my mother would tell me. She deserves all the happiness in the world, and you don’t have much to give her, my son. You have to face facts. Nora will be pampered. She’ll live in a big house and eat her fill every day. Don’t be selfish. Leave her to her destiny, and try to find one for yourself …

  My cousin Nora, the love I had thought was mine for sure, my reason for living, had been handed over to a rich landowner from Frenda.

  How had a country bumpkin who lived hundreds of miles from Oran heard about her? Nora almost never left the house, never saw anybody.

  ‘The matchmakers!’ the Mozabite enlightened me. ‘They’re professionals who frequent the hammam. And there’s no more propitious place to evaluate the merchandise than a hammam. The matchmakers know their business. They come and take a bath, settle in the hot room and choose from among the naked virgins those who have high breasts, shapely thighs, full hips, nice round buttocks, slender necks and pretty faces. After setting their sights on the one they prefer, they follow her from a distance, find out where she lives and gather as much information about her as they can from the neighbours. Once they’re sure they’ve got their hands on the right girl, they inform the family that hired them and, within a week, ladies loaded with gifts appear as if out of the blue to make their offer to the beauty’s parents … It’s an old practice. How else can you explain, when a virgin has been confined within four walls, that someone always comes to ask for her hand? The matchmakers are the best detectives in the country, and probably the best paid. They’d track down the Queen of Sheba without any problem.’

  I was devastated.

  I didn’t go to Kristel that day.

  No sea would have been big enough to drown my sorrows in.

  No sooner requested than wrapped and delivered. Within three weeks, everything was arranged and the marriage procession was begun. I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself. My blue-bird had gone to her cage and her chirping was drowned out by the noises of the city.

  In Oran, winter arrives like a thief and leaves the same way. What does it take with it in its shameful retreat? Everything the inhabitants hate – greyness, cold, short days, bad moods – in other words, what they gladly give up to it.

  That winter was the worst of all winters; it had stolen the sun from me. When spring returned with its lights and its joys, it merely made my nights all the colder and sadder. With Nora gone, my people and my streets were unfamiliar to me. I had been betrayed. My aunt was not unaware of the feelings I had for her daughter. How could she have trampled on them? And why hadn’t my mother tried to dissuade her? I hated the whole earth, the angels and the demons, and every star in the sky. I had the feeling I had lost sight of the one point of reference that mattered to me. Suddenly, I didn’t know where I was. Deprived of my certainties and a little of my soul, I began cursing everything in my path.

  My mother tried to reason with me. Love is the privilege of the rich, she said. The poor don’t have access to it. Their world is too wretched to accommodate a dream; their romance is a sham.

  I didn’t agree. I refused to admit that everything could be bought and sold, including one’s own offspring. As far as I was concerned, Nora had been sold. To an old country bumpkin from Frenda, rich enough to afford a houri, but too miserly and obtuse to offer her paradise. Nora would be nothing but a kind of odalisque trapped in a hostile harem. The others would resent her for being the youngest, the most idolised by the master, and they would plot against her until she ended up as less than a shadow. Then the master would find himself a new virgin, and Nora would be relegated to the rank of occasional concubine …

  At night, I would lie on the balcony, unable to get to sleep. On my back, my hands behind my neck, I would look up at the sky as if it were some undesirable I was looking up and down. I would imagine Nora in the arms of her repulsive ogre, who probably smelt of mouldy hay beneath his satin robe; it was as if a machine had got out of control and was crushing me. It was no longer Nora suffering the advances of her lover, but me. I clearly felt that bastard’s sticky hands soil my flesh, his rutting animal breath on my face, and my lungs filled with his fetid exhalations.

  Never had fate seemed so unjust as it did on those nights.

  I had loved in silence a cousin of my own rank and blood, and an ageing stranger had appeared from nowhere to steal her from me like a big arm taking from a child the only dream that would console him for everything he would never possess!

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ I said to Gino.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And will you answer me honestly?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Am I cursed?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then why do bad things always happen to me?’

  ‘What’s happening to you, Turambo, is something everyone goes through. You’re no more to be pitied than a workman who falls off a ladder. That’s what happens in life. With a bit of patience, this bad patch will be nothing but a vague memory.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  I waited for the bad patch to turn into a vague memory, but every morning, when I awoke, there it was, omnipresent, stinking up the air I breathed and contaminating my thoughts.

  I could no longer sleep.

  By day, I would keep close to the walls like a crab. Oran had become a circus of horrors. I was a curious beast on display for the neighbours to mock. None of them had ever dared look up at Nora when she hung the washing out on the balcony. They knew she was mine, and they were jealous. Some were delighted at my disappointment now and made little attempt to hide it. Others had no qualms about making hurtful insinuations. Even when I responded with my fists, they continued to make fun of me … To escape these unpleasant remarks, which often led to nasty fights, I would retreat to the Cueva del Agua, a cliff to the east of the city, far from the bustle and the misunderstandings. It was a sinister spot where a few ragged fishermen would pretend to be watching their lines while getting blind drunk and having arguments. Looking at them, I felt like getting drunk too, as if there was no tomorrow, so drunk I would take a wave for a flood. I felt like proclaiming my sorrow in order to drown out the noise of the waves, insulting all the patron saints of the city one by one, cursing the rich and the poor until I’d got rid of all of them.

  What difference would it have made?

  I contented myself with gazing at the sea. I would sit down on a big rock, put my chin on my knees, wrap my arms round my legs to warm them and stare at the horizon. The ships in the harbour proved to me that there were other places to go, other shores, where you could have fabulous chance encounters, meet people who spoke strange languages. I dreamt of jumping on a boat and setting sail for some mirage. With Nora gone, I had lost my moorings. I was unhappy every time a voice, a figure, a rustle brought her memory back to me. Leave her to her destiny, my mother had said, and try to find one for yourself … How could I imagine a whole destiny when a mere blow of fate was enough to disqualify me?

  I spent hours questioning the sea, feeling the breeze swell my shirt without soothing my soul. I longed to become a bubble of air, to fly above the storms and the malice of men, to put myself out of reach of my grief. I felt confined in my body, disorientated in my own mind, as empty of interest
as of meaning.

  I saw Nora again six months after she got married. She had come back to see her mother.

  I returned one day from my wanderings and there she was, in shimmering silk, like a young princess, more beautiful than ever. The sight took my breath away. But she wasn’t alone. Two sisters-in-law and a reptilian maid watched over her; she was the apple of their eye and they wouldn’t let her out of their sight. As soon as they heard my footsteps in the corridor leading to the inner courtyard, they hurriedly lowered the curtain in the doorway to shelter their protégée. For three days, I tried to approach Nora, but in vain. I kept clearing my throat and coughing into my fist to let her know that I was in the next room, waiting for her, but Nora didn’t appear. On the fourth day, I managed to outwit her guards. Nora almost fainted when she saw me looming over her. She wouldn’t have been so scared if she’d seen a ghost. Are you mad? she choked, turning pale. What is it you want? To ruin me? I’m married now. Please go.

  She pushed me unceremoniously out of the room, out of her sight, out of her life …

  I meant nothing to her any more, except perhaps a potential source of scandal.

  That was when I remembered De Stefano’s offer, and I found myself knocking at the door of his gym in Rue Wagram.

  If you wanted to beat yourself up, there was no better place to do it than in a boxing ring.

  II

  Aïda

  1

  Rue Wagram echoed to the yells of kids kicking a rag ball. It was one in the afternoon and the sun was beating down. De Stefano’s gym was below street level, facing Porte du Ravin, with the date 1847 – the year it was built – above the door. It was a huge, ugly building, its walls full of cracks, and had once been a stable for thoroughbred horses before being transformed into a makhzan towards the end of the last century. Threatened by a landslide, it was evacuated by the military, padlocked and abandoned to the ravages of time and rats before being taken over in the 1910s by lovers of boxing. The area smelt of horseshit and of the drains that ran off into the wild grass of the gully.