The Angels Die

by Yasmina Khadra

  ‘I’m serious, Monsieur Bollocq.’

  The coolness of my tone completely extinguished his enthusiasm. His face became so tense that the lines on his forehead looked as if they were about to crack. ‘What’s this all about? Have the blows to your head driven you crazy or what?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  With a movement of his hand, the Duke swept away the files heaped up on his desk, kicked a chair, then took his head in his hands to calm himself down. He stayed like that for several seconds, with his back to me, trying to get his thoughts in order. When he turned back, there was nothing human about his flushed face. He was shaking all over, his nostrils were dilated, and his eyes were popping out of their sockets. He started by putting his finger on my chest, then took it away and looked around, his breathing uncontrolled.

  ‘I’m dreaming,’ he grunted. ‘It isn’t possible.’

  Suddenly, he grabbed me by the throat, but he was too short to hold on. He went back behind his desk and gazed out at the plane tree in the courtyard.

  ‘Ginooo!’ he screamed.

  An alarmed secretary appeared. He sent her to fetch Gino from the second floor. Gino came running. I heard him come up the stairs four steps at a time. He was surprised to see me there, but the Duke didn’t give him time to recover his composure.

  ‘Can you explain to me what’s got into your friend here?’

  Gino swallowed.

  ‘Did you know about his decision?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘I thought I could reason with him.’

  ‘Apparently, you haven’t been very convincing.’

  ‘To be honest, we haven’t had the opportunity to talk about it with a clear head.’

  ‘It’s your head that’s on the line, boy,’ the Duke roared, charging at Gino. ‘If this stupid fake brother of yours doesn’t apologise to me right now, I don’t rate your chances of survival.’

  ‘It’s an unfortunate misunderstanding, Monsieur. It’ll all be sorted out, I promise.’

  But I was resolute. ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ I said. ‘Neither Gino nor anyone will get me to change it.’

  The Duke again rushed at me, his speech agitated. ‘I don’t think you realise the risk you’re taking, you little fool. I’m not a boxer and I don’t follow any rules when I cross swords with an opponent. Do you follow me? I don’t know if you have a brain or motor oil in that head of yours, but if I were you, I’d be careful, very careful.’ Registering that his threat didn’t scare me, he assumed a less abrupt tone. ‘Do you mind telling me what hasn’t worked out between us? We’ve been with you every step of the way. So why this about-turn? If it’s a question of money, let’s put our cards on the table. Everything’s negotiable, champ.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Monsieur Bollocq. It isn’t a question of money and I have no gripes with anybody. You’re been terrific, all of you. I haven’t disappointed you. We’re quits.’

  ‘Not so fast, knucklehead. I’m trying to launch your career internationally and you bring it back to me like a dog bringing back the stick his master threw for him.’

  ‘I’m not a dog.’

  ‘That remains to be seen … What can’t be denied is that I’m the master here. All you have, you owe to me. I’ve spent a fortune getting an uneducated Arab street kid without a future onto the top podiums. I told you a long time ago, you’re nothing but an investment, a business proposition that’s cost me a lot of money, massive negotiations, and partnerships with people who made me queasy. For your sake, I’ve been forced to grease palms, bribe journalists, forgive people who’ve betrayed me and make my peace with nobodies. And now you come here, bold as brass, to tell me you’re pulling out, and you think you’re within your rights?’

  He turned to Gino.

  ‘Take this native of yours and get out of here. When you come back to see me, I want you both to apologise, on your knees and in tears. Otherwise, I’ll come looking for you and I’ll make you rue the day your paths crossed … Now clear off!’

  Gino took me straight to his office. He was in a total panic.

  ‘What’s got into you, damn it? What quagmire are you dragging all of us into? The Duke won’t let you go like that. We’re both in danger. For heaven’s sake, let’s go back and apologise.’

  ‘I don’t owe him anything any more.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure; you owe him more than you can imagine. You were nothing but an alley cat and he made you a tiger. Without him, you’d still be drinking from ditches. I know better than you do how to recognise who’s wrong and who deserves respect … Your problem is, your brain would fit on the head of a pin. You don’t know what’s good for you and what to avoid like the plague. You want some golden advice? Give up the woman. She’s leading you astray. If you meant anything to her, she wouldn’t stand in your way, she’d encourage you to keep going, to win title after title, to reach for the stars. I’m begging you, in the name of our fraternal friendship, our little dreams when we were poor kids, what we’ve been through and what we’ve built up from nothing with our own hands, I’m beseeching you, I’ll kiss your hands and feet, come back to me, come back to us, and get rid of that tramp who’s trying to push you back into the gutter you’ve only just made it out of.’

  ‘Do you realise what you’re asking of me, Gino? I care about that woman. Not a minute goes by that I don’t think about her, and you’re asking me to forget her. Gino, my dear Gino, can’t you see that I’m happy for the first time in my life? I love Irène, don’t you understand? I love her. My days only have a meaning because Irène makes each one new for me.’

  He slapped me. ‘You’re selfish. Stupid and pig-headed and selfish. After all I’ve gone through for you, you’re casting me aside.’

  ‘Don’t ever raise your hand to me, Gino. I mean it.’

  ‘Then do what I ask. You’re walking all over me as if I was a doormat. How dare you throw away what we’ve built for you?’

  ‘I’m really sorry. This hurts me, it really does. I have a lot of affection for De Stefano, Tobias and Salvo. And you’re still a brother to me. But I’m tired of taking punches. I need to get down off my cloud, to walk among people, to live a normal life.’

  ‘You promised my mother on her deathbed. You swore never to let a serpent come between us.’

  ‘Irène isn’t a serpent, Gino.’

  ‘She is, Turambo, only you don’t see it. You’re hypnotised by her like a field mouse.’

  ‘You’ll get over it, Gino. Your friendship means a lot to me. Let’s not throw it away.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s throwing it away. You don’t have any consideration for me, or any pity. I’m this close to having a heart attack and you don’t give a damn. If that’s your idea of friendship, you can keep it. I’d never have landed you in the shit. You don’t know how disappointed I am in you. You’re behaving like a hypocrite and a coward. You disgust me. A bastard, that’s what you are, a filthy, ungrateful bastard.’

  His words hurt me.

  Gino had fire in his eyes and venom in his mouth. His nostrils trembled with resentment, his lips cursed me. He was choking like an asthmatic, his breath hot with the magma rising in him, terrifying in its bile, his features distorted.

  ‘Be careful,’ he breathed, wagging his finger in my face. ‘You aren’t the one in charge, Turambo. Don’t bury us too soon. I’ve given too much of myself for you and I won’t let you ruin my future.’

  ‘You see? Your future. If you care so much about yours, why do you want me to give up mine?’

  ‘One doesn’t rule out the other. Boxing isn’t incompatible with marriage. Marry that slut of yours if you really want to, but for God’s sake don’t sacrifice us for the sake of her lovely eyes.’

  ‘It isn’t just that, Gino. I’m fed up with licking my wounds while you lick your fingers counting your money.’

  ‘You’re
making money too.’

  ‘And losing my self-respect. I don’t want to make a spectacle of myself any more.’

  ‘I beg you, Turambo, try to think for two seconds!’

  ‘That’s all I’ve been doing for months. I’ve made my decision and it’s not negotiable.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  He shook his head, defeated, then recovered and looked up at me with blood-red eyes, his cheeks twitching. His mouth twisted to one side. ‘I warn you,’ he roared, ‘I won’t let you get away with this.’

  A transformation was taking place before my very eyes. A mask was being ripped off a wonderful time of innocence and disinterested complicity, to reveal a new face, repulsive and obscene. Gino was giving birth, painfully, to a character whose dark side I had barely suspected. You would have sworn it emerged from the wall behind him, or from a tomb, stony-faced, eyes full of dust, veiled in shadow, no, worse, embodied in shadow. Gino had the tragic look of someone who has a knife to his throat and who’d be ready to turn it on his best friend to save his own skin. I no longer recognised him. He might well have been thinking the same thing about me, except that I wasn’t asking anything of him, whereas the sacrifice he was expecting of me was tearing us apart. We were no longer on the same side.

  ‘Are you threatening me, Gino?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Well, I don’t give a fuck about your threats. The Duke can fire you, lynch you, preserve you in formaldehyde, I don’t care.’

  ‘You’re a laughing stock, boy. Wake up. Your muse is nothing but a slut who sleeps with the first man who comes along. She’ll kick you out of her bed as soon as she tires of you. Didn’t Mouss tell you?’

  ‘So it was you who sent him to see me?’

  ‘Damn right it was. I thought you had self-respect and a sense of honour like the men of your community. I realise now you’re just a fool taken in by a prick-teaser. She’d swap you for a wad of banknotes without even bothering to count them. I’m going to prove to you that that bitch on heat can be bought like any other whore.’

  ‘Stay away from her, Gino.’

  ‘What are you afraid of? That I’m right?’

  I pushed him away and ran down the stairs.

  He ran after me, yelling, ‘I won’t let you sabotage my plans, Turambo, you hear? Turambo! Turambo!’

  After driving around the boulevards, I went to a Moorish café near Sidi Blel. The alley was too narrow to drive down. I left my car outside a little park and walked the rest of the way to the café. A few turbaned customers were chatting over their tea. A blind singer was playing the lute on a makeshift stage. I ordered cinnamon coffee and Tunisian doughnuts. I had the feeling I was being born into a new world, leaving far behind what motivated the others more than me. The moorings that had chained me to mad promises and contracts would no longer prevent me from going out into the open air. I had always dreaded confronting the Duke; his social standing, his natural authority, his seismic rages had intimidated me. I never imagined I could stand up to him, let alone inform him openly of my decision. Yet, leaving his office, I had no longer felt a leaden weight on my shoulders; his threats hadn’t worked with me. I was free of that fear inherent in my condition as a ‘native’ forged in the test of strength and irrational guilt. I think I whistled in the street, or maybe I laughed that nervous laugh relieving us of a terror which, in the end, turns out to be as common as it’s unfounded. It was a strange feeling, so light it seemed I was floating. I remembered Sid Roho’s grandfather, who had, according to my childhood friend, lived like a lord even in poverty. Dispossessed of his lands, he had retired to the mountains in order not to be beholden to anyone and spent his life sleeping, daydreaming, poaching and raising a family. Apparently, he’d said, ‘There’s only one choice that matters: doing what we most care about. Everything else is denial.’

  I had made my choice. Podium or scaffold, I didn’t really care, I was beyond any doubts. Paradoxically, my serenity took the form of a great tiredness: I felt an enormous need to lie down somewhere, anywhere, and sleep. I drank one coffee after another and stuffed myself with doughnuts without even realising.

  When I asked for the bill, the owner told me that someone had settled it for me, but wouldn’t tell me who. In our world, in spite of poverty, that kind of thoughtfulness was common; the main thing was not to insist on learning your benefactor’s identity.

  I went out into the street, thanking the people sat at tables outside at random. My heartbeat had slowed down. I felt fine.

  Some old men were playing dominoes in a doorway. I stopped to exchange pleasantries with them. In the square, a gang of urchins were having fun on the bonnet of my car; when they saw me, they scattered, screaming, then came back and ran after me. The more agile of them ran level with my door, their mouths wide open, laughing triumphantly. I waved goodbye to them and accelerated.

  Evening was knocking on the doors of the city. My mother was chatting with her Kabyle neighbour in the courtyard, an oil lamp placed on the edge of the well. In order not to disturb them, I went straight into our flat. My father was talking to himself in his room, his hands shaking. I kissed his forehead and sat down on a cushion facing him. He looked at me, tilting his neck to the side, a vague smile on his face. For some weeks now, he had been talking to himself, giving the impression he had entered a world of shadows and echoes.

  My mother shook me. I woke with a start. I had dozed off. Remembering Alarcon Ventabren, I jumped in my car and sped to the hospital. Dr Jacquemin received me very courteously. He admitted he had recognised me the day before, but given the circumstances, hadn’t dared tell me how much he admired me as a boxer. He took me to Alarcon’s room. Alarcon was looking well. The doctor explained to me that there was nothing seriously wrong, that his dizzy spell had been brought on by a fleeting anxiety attack, the kind sometimes caused by paralysis and the physical and mental discomfort that came with it.

  ‘You can take him home now, but just to be on the safe side it might be advisable for him to stay here another night. After a good sleep, he’ll be able to go home singing.’

  ‘I’d prefer to wait until tomorrow morning,’ Alarcon agreed. ‘I don’t like travelling at night, especially not in the rain.’

  The doctor went away.

  Alarcon pointed with his chin to a plate on the bedside table. ‘The food here is disgusting. Would it be too much trouble for you to bring me a bowl of soup from the stand on the corner?’

  ‘They must have shut up shop by now.’

  ‘You can’t imagine how much I’d like a nice spicy chorba, with vermicelli and a pinch of cumin, a nice hot scented chorba.’

  I went back to my mother’s. She was fast asleep, but when I told her it was for a sick man, she got up and herself made the chorba that Alarcon gulped down later, chuckling with delight.

  ‘I should go and tell Irène,’ I said. ‘She must be worried.’

  ‘We can both surprise her tomorrow. Stay with me. I’m so glad to be alive. I really thought I’d had it. And besides, I could do with the company.’

  I sat down on a metal chair near the bed and got ready to listen, certain this was going to last all night. Alarcon was still talking when I dozed off.

  At about ten in the morning, Alarcon was carried to my car on a stretcher. He chose to sit in the front seat, to get a good view. He told me he hadn’t set foot in Oran for ages. But the city looked grim beneath the rain-laden gusts of wind. The pavements were empty, the shop fronts gloomy and the signs above the shady dives creaked in a sinister and maddening way.

  In bad weather, Oran is like a botched spell.

  I bought fresh bread from a bakery, lamb chops and a string of merguez from a kosher butcher, some provisions too, and we set off for Lourmel. The trees writhed at the side of the road and a stream of mist rolled down from the mountain over the elegant village of Misserghin. Alarcon gazed out at the hills and the orchards, a dreamy smile on his face. In the sky, the disma
l clouds that had pressed down on Oran were starting to disperse. In places, the daylight showed through the gaps. The further we got from the coast, the less the mist flowed across the road. It was still drizzling, but the wind was abating in the orange groves and vineyards. Alarcon started humming a military tune, beating time on the dashboard with his fist. I listened to him, lost in thought. I couldn’t wait to tell Irène that I’d broken with the Duke once and for all.

  The hut of Larbi the fruit seller shook in the breeze, the curtains blown back. On the path leading to the farm, amid the potholes, there were recent tyre tracks. My car skidded in the ruts.

  The presence of two vans in the Ventabrens’ courtyard puzzled me. When they saw us, a handful of men armed with sticks and poles regrouped near the house, surrounded by three uniformed policemen. In my suddenly dry throat, my Adam’s apple leapt in panic.

  One of the policemen waved his kepi, signalling me to come towards him. He was a stunted little man with a toothbrush moustache, a pointed nose and large, protruding ears. He seemed exhausted.

  ‘Thank God you’re alive, Monsieur Ventabren,’ he cried, recognising my passenger. ‘My men and some volunteers have been combing the area for hours looking for you. We thought someone had abducted you and thrown your body in the scrub.’

  Alarcon couldn’t grasp what the policeman was babbling about, but the presence of strangers on his land was a bad omen.

  ‘How could I get to the scrub in a wheelchair? What’s going on? Why are you in my house?’

  ‘Something’s happened, Monsieur Ventabren. Something terrible …’

  I jumped out of the car, ran to the house and stopped dead in the hall. The table in the drawing room had been moved, the chairs overturned, some broken, and a painting had fallen to the floor. I called out for Irène; in the bathroom, around the full tub, pools of soapy water were turning black on the tiled floor. There were signs of a violent struggle, but no blood. Irène! Irène! My cries echoed inside me, louder than hammer blows. In the kitchen, a metal jug lay in a pool of spilt milk. I went upstairs, then came back down again; Irène didn’t reply, didn’t show herself.