The following day we met my uncle and my grandmother in Douar ej Jdid, and then we went to see my aunt in the quarter of Serimine. She had married a man from Marrakech.
You’ve grown up, my grandmother told me. Soon you’ll be a man. Then you’ll work and help me to live. Isn’t that right?
Yes. She was thin and sick.
My father left me behind with my aunt, and went on to look for his brothers in other Algerian cities far from Oran. Three months later a letter came from him saying that he had gone back to Tetuan, and that it would be better for me to stay on in Oran.
My aunt got her husband to find me a job, and soon I was working on the farm of the same French woman in whose stable he worked. I was in the vineyard from five in the morning to six in the evening. The pause at midday for eating and resting lasted only an hour, but often we managed to prolong it another hour more, if nobody came by. My work consisted in guiding two mules along the ploughed tracks in the earth.
I grew tanned, and the palms of my hand became calloused. The old farm labourer under whom I worked treated me according to the way he felt at the moment. Depending on the circumstances he could be kind or heartless. I learned that his harsh words were only a way of expressing the frustration he felt at the work he was forced to do. What hurt me in his behaviour was the fact that he treated me as a peasant.
The country you come from has produced only one man, and that was Abd el Krim el Khattabi, he would tell me.
I had not yet heard of Abd el Krim, and had no idea who he was.
I continued this backbreaking work for six months. On Sundays I would go out to catch birds, or walk to the city. One day I tried in vain to climb a high tree. That leg was tall and smooth. I grew very angry at being repulsed, and so I went to the shed and filled a can with gasoline. I doused the tree trunk and lit a match. The flames were beautiful. I said to the charred tree: Now you’re not so smooth. I can climb you, as high as I want.
There was no one in sight. The place was hidden from the farmhouse and its outbuildings. The tree looked like a woman, only it was without legs, and its branches took the place of a head.
I looked for a smaller tree, and found it, smooth and bright. I discovered that when I put my arms around it, they met at the back. I cut the outline of a woman on the trunk, with head and torso, and then I began the creation. For a full week I was busy cutting out two deep holes for the breasts, as well as another even deeper one at the meeting of the legs. And so I made the tree woman. Whenever I wanted to amuse myself I fastened an orange into each breast-hole, and sucked on them. Sometimes I substituted apples, so that I could chew pieces out of them. The opening between the thighs had to be lubricated, and then I was able to transfer all the images in my memory to the tree woman.
One evening my aunt’s husband told me: Tomorrow you won’t be going to the vineyard. Madame Segundi, the foreman’s wife, wants to see you. She may let you work for her in the house. That depends on whether she likes you.
I was overjoyed. But I was troubled by his final words: If she likes you.
Madame Segundi was friendly and pleasant. She was also young and attractive, and the litheness of her body reminded me of Asiya. Sitting facing her I was humble, even timid. But it was not so in my fantasies. She would be a marvellous new toy for my dreams; it is best to change one’s dreams each day. She spoke to me in Spanish, and I tried desperately to remember the few words I still knew.
Madame Segundi gave me three days in which to prepare myself for work. I spent them at the circus, the cinema, and the cafés. I carried a bottle of wine with me wherever I went. At night I would drink it at the farm in the small hut that stood alongside my uncle’s house. The only one to witness my nocturnal pleasures was Tigre, the dog.
My pretty mistress taught me how to wash dishes and dry them, and how to fry eggs and fish. One day I cooked her a Moroccan tajine, and she was delighted with it. She got into the habit of asking for it each week. Today we’ll have your Moroccan food. But you’ve got to make it by yourself.
I enjoyed working for her, and I used her as a dream object whenever I felt excited. I had begun to miss the whores of Tetuan. Slow or fast, kissing lips and breasts, or only the cheeks, neck and shoulders, it did not matter. But in Oran, although I had heard about them, I had no idea how to find the brothels. Even if I had known where they were, I could not have gone alone. I should have needed a friend to take me. The friends I had there in Oran were all very serious-minded. It would have been unthinkable for me to mention my desires to anyone at the farm. How could I have brought up the subject, when not one of them ever smiled? Sometimes I watched Monsieur Segundi kiss his beautiful wife and lightly run his hands over her body. He did not mind doing it in front of me. Usually I served them their breakfast in bed, he bare-chested, and she in her transparent nightgown that showed her nipples, like two raisins, underneath. Even to think of the space between them filled my mouth with saliva and made my senses begin to blur.
One day she asked me to wash her husband’s underwear. As I plunged the garments into the water I thought: What is this? One man shouldn’t be washing another man’s underwear. Then I said to Monique, my mistress: No. I’m not going to wash these clothes.
Why not?
These are Monsieur Segundi’s shorts.
And so?
I hung my head and said: A man doesn’t wash another man’s underwear.
She laughed. And what about women’s underwear?
I hesitated, and then told her: Women’s clothes are different. A man can wash them for her if she can’t do it herself.
You’re very funny, she said. You’re marvellous! Is that the custom in Morocco?
I was not certain whether it was a true custom, or only one which I had just invented. There was no precedent for it in my experience. But I said: Yes. That’s our custom in Morocco.
It’s very strange, she said.
They laughed together about it, she and her husband. A few days later it was Monsieur Segundi himself who ordered me to wash his underpants. I said no. He insisted, and I continued to refuse.
What do you mean, you won’t wash them? he demanded.
That’s what I mean.
Then go home and stay there!
Three days later I was sent back to work by my relatives, who had the Segundis’ approval. My mistress’s parents came from Sidi bel Abbès to visit her, and her father talked with me about his Spanish origins. He pitied me, he said, for not being able to read or write in any language, and he asked me if they did not teach either Arabic or Spanish in Tetuan.
Yes, I’ve heard they teach both Arabic and Spanish, I said.
They why didn’t you go to school?
Because my father never thought of sending me.
Was it that he didn’t send you, or that you didn’t want to go?
I don’t know, I said. But he didn’t ever take me to any school.
He looked for a moment at my forehead. How did you get that scar?
I was crossing the street and there was a bicycle race going on, I told him.
I wondered later why some men were so much nicer than my father.
The summer afternoons in Oran are fine and long. The old men play checkers. The young ones fence with wooden swords. The women are inside, or talking in their doorways. The children are everywhere, playing games and fashioning toys out of clay and pieces of wood or cane.
I went to Sidi bel Abbès with my employers. All the members of Madame Segundi’s family were good to me, but it was her father who seemed particularly to like me. I took a walk in the town. It was sad and sinister, although I liked the main avenue and the cathedral. I heard a lot of Spanish being spoken in the streets. People passed by me on all sides, but there was no question of speaking to any of them, nor did they speak to me. I was among them, but far from them. I came to a street fair. The circus spectacle began at five, and so I could not see it. I had to be back at the Segundis’ house before that. I smoked one cigarette after the other, and drank two glasses of wine in a Spanish bar. Then I went to look at the circus animals in their cages. I stopped in front of a monkey. There were some children beside its cage, and they were teasing it. I have no idea how it happened, but suddenly I felt the monkey’s claws tearing my face. I yelled and jumped back. The guard came and chased the children away. Then he looked at my scratches and patted my shoulder, shouting again at the fleeing children.