Overcome by the heat, a wafer vendor was dozing in the shade of a basket shaped like an African drum. Facing him, two scrawny brats sat on the pavement, swathed in moth-eaten rags, their eyes as empty as their bellies, like two puppies staring at a piece of sugar. Not far off, a housewife was emptying dishwater outside her front door, her dress pulled up above her knees. Further down, a gang of urchins were harassing an alley cat while an amused old drunk looked on impassively.
The wafer vendor woke when he heard me approach and immediately became defensive. I gestured to him to calm down.
The doors of the gym were open. I walked into a large, depressing-looking sports hall. Light filtered in through the holes in the roof and the shutterless windows and bounced off the filthy tiled floor. To the right of the door stood a small table littered with the remains of food, a dirty glass and a Paloma bottle filled with water. To the left were a few crinkled posters of boxers on the walls. An old boxing ring was just about holding up on a platform, its ropes hanging loose. Behind, a shapeless punch bag hung from its gallows. At the far end, a dilapidated cubicle could be made out through the gloom. I could hear two men arguing, one angry, the other conciliatory.
I took an instant dislike to the place. It stank of mould and defeat.
Just as I was about to leave, a tall, thin man emerged from the toilets, hopping on a wooden leg. ‘Who are you looking for?’ he asked, walking back to the table near the door.
‘De Stefano.’
‘He’s busy. What’s it about?’
‘He asked me to come by.’
‘Was it De Stefano who asked for you and not somebody else?’
I didn’t reply. Doormen often grant themselves an authority they don’t have and shamelessly abuse it. He waved me to a bench.
‘You chose the wrong time, son. At this hour of the day, they’re either eating or sleeping.’
He collapsed onto his chair and started biting into his sandwich.
The two men in the cubicle were still arguing.
‘Why does he call me a monkey?’ one of them said excitedly. ‘Did he pick me off a tree?’
I recognised De Stefano’s voice saying, ‘You know what they’re like at Le Petit Oranais. They aren’t journalists, they’re madmen and racists. They hate wops. Plus, they’re jealous.’
‘Are you sure it’s because they’re jealous, and not because I’m Portuguese?’
‘Absolutely. That’s the way the world is: there are those who become legends and those who make lots of noise because that’s all they can do.’
The doorman swallowed his last mouthful, washed it down with a gulp of water, let out a formidable belch, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said to me in a low voice, ‘Rodrigo’s a nutcase. He’s never been in a ring in his life. He’s made up this idea that he’s a champion and he believes it totally. When he’s having one of his attacks, he comes here and drives us all up the wall. He tells everyone the press are giving him a hard time, that he’s had enough, and so on and so on, and De Stefano likes to tell him he sympathises and tries to encourage him …’
I nodded out of politeness.
‘I think De Stefano gets a kick out of it,’ the doorman went on. ‘He thinks he’s really encouraging a champion and that makes him feel he’s important. He used to be big. He had a whole lot of promising fighters in his stable. Then it all fizzled out, and all he’s left with is nostalgia. So he keeps Rodrigo around in order not to lose the thread, and waits for the good old days to come back …’
The little door of the cubicle opened and a gangling, pale-eyed individual in a threadbare jacquard pullover and a pair of crumpled trousers came out, strutted across the room, saluting the poster of a champion as he passed it, and went out into the street without taking any notice of us.
De Stefano opened his arms wide to greet me. ‘So you made your mind up at last …’
In the street, Rodrigo started shouting abuse at us.
‘That’s Rodrigo,’ De Stefano said. ‘A former champion.’
Behind him, the tall, thin man wagged his finger to deny this.
‘Well, Turambo? To what do I owe the pleasure?’
‘You asked me to come by, so here I am.’
‘Congratulations! I promise you won’t regret it.’
‘I don’t see anyone here …’
‘It isn’t time yet. Most of our boxers have to work to make ends meet. But in the evening, it’s bedlam, I can assure you …’ Then, turning to the doorman, ‘Did you deliver the package, Tobias?’
‘Not yet. There’s nobody to mind the shop.’
‘Go now. You know how Toni is. He doesn’t like being neglected. Take Turambo with you. That way, he’ll find a few boys in the ring when he gets back. And tell the baker to send me a snack. I’ll take over; try not to dawdle, please.’
Tobias started to clear the table, but De Stefano told him he’d take care of it and pointed to a package in the corner.
‘Can you carry it for me?’ Tobias asked me. ‘It isn’t heavy, but with my wooden leg …’
‘No problem,’ I said, picking up the package.
Tobias walked fast; his wooden leg banged on the road surface and made him lurch to the side.
‘Did you lose your leg in an accident?’
‘In a garden,’ he said sarcastically. ‘I stepped on a seed, the seed got embedded in the sole of my foot, and in the morning, when I woke up, a wooden leg had grown under my thigh.’
We walked in silence for a while. Tobias was very well known. Everywhere we went, people greeted him. He would trade insults with some, jokes with others, and throw his head back in a shrill laugh. He was a handsome man, very clean beneath his old clothes; without his disability, he could have passed for a commercial traveller or a postman.
‘I left my leg on a battlefield, at Verdun,’ he admitted suddenly.
‘You were in the war?’
‘Like millions of other fools.’
‘And what’s it like?’
He wiped his forehead on his forearm and asked me to pause because of his wooden leg, which was starting to torment him. He sat down on a low wall to catch his breath. ‘You want to know what war is like?’
‘Yes,’ I said, in the hope of understanding a little of what had happened to my father.
‘I can’t make any comparison. It isn’t like anything else. It’s a bit like every nightmare, and no nightmare could describe it. You’re simultaneously in a slaughterhouse, a bullring, a chamber of horrors, down the bottom of a toilet and in hell, except that your pains never end.’
‘Do you have children?’
‘I had two. I don’t know where they are. Their mother walked out on me while I was trying to survive in that abattoir.’
‘Haven’t you tried to find them?’
‘I’m too tired.’
‘I had a father. He was a good man. When he came back from the war, he deserted his family. He left us one night and abandoned us in the mud.’
‘Yes, that kind of reaction is common. War is a strange kind of excursion. You go to it to the sound of bugles, and you come back in the skin of a ghost, your head full of noises, and don’t know what to do with your shitty life afterwards.’
He pointed to a monument behind us and an equestrian statue in a little park at the corner of the street.
‘All those statues tell us about the madness of men. When we put flowers on them on Remembrance Day, all we’re doing is hiding our faces and lying to ourselves. We don’t honour the dead, we disturb them. Look at that statue of a general over there. What is it saying? Just that however much we fight and burn towns and fields, slaughter people while proclaiming victory, and make the tears of widows flow, the heroes end up on marble pedestals for pigeons to shit on …’
He pulled up his trouser leg and adjusted his prosthesis. His brow furrowed.
‘I’ve never understood how each generation can allow itself to be deceived. I suppose the nation is more important than the family.
Well, I don’t agree. You can have as many nations as you like, but if you don’t have a family, you’re nobody.’
He pulled down his trouser leg with an abrupt gesture. The furrow on his forehead deepened.
‘Amazing, isn’t it? You carry on with your daily routine, calmly, you cultivate your garden, you put your meagre savings away in a safe place, and in a corner of your head you make plans, modest plans, as small as a wisp of straw. You look after your kids, convinced it’s going to be that way till death do us part. Then, all at once, some high-ranking strangers you’ve never met decide your fate. They take away your little dreams and land you in the middle of their crazy scheme. That’s war. You don’t know why it’s there, but you fall into it like a hair into soup. By the time you realise what’s going on, the storm has passed. When the light comes back on, you no longer recognise what was there.’
He hauled himself up.
‘War is only an adventure for those fools who believe a medal is worth a life. I wasn’t the king of the world before, but I didn’t complain. I was a railway worker; I had a home and reasons to hope. Then something got into me and I left everything to wave a flag and march to the sound of drums. Obviously, that threw my life off course. I don’t blame anyone. That’s the way it is, and that’s that. If I had to do it all over again, I’d pour wax in my ears so that I couldn’t hear the bugles, or the orders, or the cannon fire … Nothing is worth a life, my boy, neither glory nor a page in the history books, and no field of honour can equal a woman’s bed.’
*
By the time we got back, the gym was looking a bit livelier. A few young men in shorts were doing body-building exercises. De Stefano was talking to a thickset young man whom he dismissed when we arrived. He asked Tobias if Toni had had any objections. Tobias told him that the fellow in question had grumbled a fair amount, but that the misunderstanding had been resolved. De Stefano grunted something, then took me aside.
‘Get in the ring,’ he said.
‘I don’t have the right clothes, or gloves.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Get in as you are; don’t take your shoes off.’
I did as he asked. The thickset young man joined me on the platform. He had put on gloves and sports shoes. He came and stood in front of me, cracked his neck, did a few knee bends and took two steps back. I was expecting to be given instructions. There weren’t any. Without warning, the boy started punching me in the face. I lost my bearings, unsure if I was supposed to respond or just take it. My opponent kept pummelling my body. I felt as if a piston was trying to crush my sides. The floor gave way beneath my feet. While I was down, the boy continued jumping up and down on the spot.
‘Get up!’ De Stefano cried. ‘Defend yourself!’
No sooner was I on my feet than I had to shelter behind my arms to withstand my opponent’s frantic assault. My few counterattacks went nowhere. The boy was quick on his feet, elusive; he dodged my punches, pushed me away whenever I tried to hold on to him; he would feint at me, his head never in the same place for more than a second.
He knocked me down again.
De Stefano ordered the boy to leave, and me to get down from the ring.
‘Now you know that boxing is nothing like street fighting,’ he said. ‘On the ground, you’re a single person, a nobody. In the ring, you’re asked to be a god. Boxing is a science, an art and an ambition … I’d like you to remember this day, my boy. That way, you’ll realise how far you’ve come the evening you score your first victory. There’s a whole programme to get through, and you’ll have to follow it to the letter. Buy yourself a duffle bag, a pair of shorts, a vest and some sports shoes. The gloves are on the house. Tobias will explain the training schedule. As of tomorrow, I want to see you here every day.’
‘I have to look for a job.’
‘That’s what I mean by training schedule. There are three timetables, just choose the one that suits you. The members of my club also work. You have to have something to sink your teeth into before you can think of breaking other people’s teeth.’
For the first few weeks, I wasn’t allowed in the ring. De Stefano was waiting for me to earn that privilege. He had to clear away the cobwebs first, and so he started by testing my stamina: I had to go up and down the hills of the Ravin, run as far as the pine grove at Les Planteurs, climb the sides of Murdjadjo clinging to the bushes, listen to my body, push it to the limit, control my breathing, adjust my stride to the uneven terrain and end with a sprint. By the time I got home, I’d be all in, with my tongue hanging out and my throat burning. Mekki, who didn’t look kindly on this self-imposed ordeal, tried to discover what I was up to, suspecting I was in some kind of trouble. As I couldn’t admit to him that I’d chosen to be a boxer, our conversation ended very badly, and Gino, to put an end to my rebellion, suggested I stay with him. I accepted without hesitation.
I felt much better on Boulevard Mascara. Not having to give any account of myself to anyone, I devoted myself fully to my new vocation.
On Sundays, Gino would come with me to the gym, where we would see Filippi, the mechanic who’d worked with us at Bébert’s garage. Whenever he had time off, Filippi would come to De Stefano’s to keep fit. He had boxed in his younger days, without much success, and continued to go to the gym and train his athlete’s body. He was enthusiastic, a bit of a show-off, and he was good at motivating me. The three of us would set off together to tackle the hills and paths. Gino often gave up halfway, unable to maintain the pace we set ourselves, but Filippi, in spite of his age, excelled and really inspired me.
At home, on Boulevard Mascara, Gino and I made bodybuilding equipment from bits of scrap iron and cemented metal cans; we were proud to display our pectorals to the girls hanging out their washing on the neighbouring rooftops.
Sport proved to be excellent therapy for Gino and me. My friend was mourning his mother and I was mourning my love … Ah, Nora, how beautiful she was! She was as dainty, graceful and frail as a poppy, and when she smiled, the world glittered with promise. Our hearts had beat as one, I had thought. I had believed she was mine, believed it so firmly that I’d never even thought of a future without her … Alas, our future is determined in spite of us. We have no hold or rights over it, and it will still be there when we’ve gone.
In the evening, after a good sweat and a hot bath, we’d go out on the town, looking for fun. There’s nothing better than the bustle of the city to drown out nasty voices calling from the depth of torment, and nothing better than crowds to shake off missing loved ones.
Oran’s nights absorbed our anxieties like blotting paper. We couldn’t afford much, but we could still have a good time; we just had to go where our steps led us. Everything was worth looking at in Oran, the carriages and the cars, the drunks and the entertainers, and everything was there to be seen without any obligation to touch it, window shopping. The cinemas, lit up as bright as day, attracted as many night owls as a lantern attracts insects. The neon signs outside the nightclubs splashed colours on the façades opposite. The bistros never emptied and were always filled with noise and tobacco smoke.
Gino and I were the valiant surveyors of the night. After doing the rounds of the open-air dance halls or coming out of the cinema, we would go to the seafront to look at the lights of the harbour and watch the dockers bustling around the freighters. The sea breeze cradled our silences; we sometimes even daydreamed, our elbows on the parapet and our cheeks resting in the palm of our hands. Once we were tired of counting the boats, we would sit down on a terrace, eat lemon ices and watch the girls swaying their hips on the esplanade, looking wonderful in their guipure dresses. Whenever a pick-up artist made a teasing comment to them, the girls would turn to him, laugh and walk away like wreaths of smoke. The man would then flick away his cigarette end and swagger along behind them, before eventually returning to his post, empty-handed but determined to try his luck again and again until there was nobody left in the streets.
They were strange people, these pick-up ar
tists. Gino was certain that they were more interested in the chase than the catch, that their happiness lay not in conquest, but in the process of picking up. We once watched one of them closely; as far as smooth talking went, he had no equal, but whenever a girl took the bait, he would realise that he was out of ideas and would stand there dumbly, not knowing what to suggest.
As there was no chance we’d find soul mates for the evening, Gino and I made do with going to the rough end of town and watching the prostitutes. They would emerge from the shadows like hallucinations, show us their big breasts, swollen by anonymous mouths, make dirty remarks and snap the elastic on their knickers. It made us laugh, and our laughter was a way of overcoming our fears and silencing those rasping voices that echoed inside us like warnings.
It was the days that were difficult. Once Gino had gone to work, I was back on the scrapheap again. Nothing interested me. Nora had given me back my heart, but I didn’t know what to do with it. It had been beating only for her. The sun would turf me out of bed like someone unclean, the streets made me go round in circles until I was seeing things and, when the time came for taking stock, I was convinced I had once again taken a wrong turn.
I needed a task to assuage my hunger.
After running all over town, I’d end up at De Stefano’s gym, exhausted and angry. I would train hard to rise above my fate, impatient to get into the ring. De Stefano deliberately kept me on the ground. The honour of stepping into the ring had to be deserved. For two months, I limited myself to physical exercises, jogging, controlling my breathing, the basics of boxing. I had to learn the different positions of my arms and fists, coordinate my reflexes and my thoughts, feint and punch in the air, smash the punch bag. De Stefano paid me more attention than the others. I could see an excitement in his eyes that he found hard to conceal. Although in his opinion, I still had some way to go to develop the right aggressiveness, he acknowledged that I was making progress, that my moves and flexibility had something, that my attacks and retreats were elegant.
The Angels Die Page 13
