“‘Duel! Duel!’
“But then out of the BMW came a second man, on the heels of Bennani. And what a man he was! He was a hulk. Huge. Mean. He rolled his large shoulders proudly, showed off a strangler’s hands, and his square jaw quivered menacingly. He was dressed in black and wearing glasses of the same color. Black!”
“The detail!”
“Out of instinct, we bookworms huddled before the door of the party hall on the Avenue des Forces-Armées-Royales, we bookworms, out of instinct, take a step back. Murmurs of astonishment. (‘Who is this guy?’ ‘Chkoune hadak?’ ‘Mnin khrouj dak James Bond?’) Bennani, seeing that the door of the party hall was closed (that imbecile Mourtada had not yet returned), leans against the wall, calm, and lights a John Player Special — he would never have been caught raising a Casa Sports to his lips. Dadouche, vexed (his attempt to defy Bennani by gaze had been stopped short), demands:
“‘Hey, Bennani, who is this guy?’
“Wisps of smoke hovering below his nostrils, Bennani responds, as if stating the obvious:
“‘He’s my bodyguard.’
“And bam! Knocked back down, our ridiculous clothes, our cologne made in España, our shoes polished with Kiwi. As usual, the rich had distanced us by choosing another arena. (The rich shift the debate: that’s their great strength. They are always where we don’t expect them.) Distressed, we looked at the bodyguard with bulging eyes — we had never seen one from so close up. His face looked the part, and his gestures even more so. He positioned himself between us and his master and banged his right fist against his left hand. We were submerged in our astonishment. Zriwil asked:
“‘Your…what?’
“The bodyguard set about examining us all from up close, starting with Zriwil.
“‘One wrong word and I’ll kill you…’
“‘What, wrong word? All of our words are in bad shape, busted, broken…It was only yesterday that we were introduced to Hugo. And plus, we’re friends with Bennani,’ replied Dadouche.
“Meanwhile, Mourtada had returned, with the stride of a melancholic ferret, and we were able to enter into the party hall. Some sandwiches were moping in a corner, next to some withering drinks. A big banner, stretched across the width of the room, proclaimed the pride of the bus drivers to finally have their union. Yellow garlands trickled from the ceiling, looking like they’d hung themselves the day after the party. The boss, who had spared no expense, had installed an old Teppaz survived from the Titanic and exactly three records: Aznavour, Petite musique de nuit, and Nana Mouskouri (Greatest Hits). We were over the moon (c’était Byzance) but not Bennani. He threw down the covers with a disdainful air after barely looking at them.
“‘What is this junk shop?’
“That was how he crushed us, routinely. If someone was excited, he would denigrate: he had seen better, he knew better. Better: he possessed better. What am I saying? He was better.
“He shrugged his shoulders.
“‘I’ll bring you real music,’ he decides.
“He leaves, followed by his bodyguard, to rummage through the trunk of the BMW and comes back, followed by his bodyguard, with a big cardboard box, and in a flick of the wrist, LPs galore. Marvin Gaye, Paul Anka, the Supremes…Through this room barely widowed of its unionists echoes the animal desire glorified by soul music:
“Let’s get it on…
“Bennani grooves a bit, is imitated by his bodyguard, closes his eyes, then says:
“‘This song is magic, girls drop like flies listening to it, if you had brought your chicks…’
“The phrase lingers, unanswered. We lower our heads, mortified. As for ‘chicks,’ we had among us only three little bookworms, Najla and two others, our classmates, who bore the brunt of our fantasies but who seemed to be interested only in math — not in us, with our faces looking like we’d been dug up from the grave.
“The night unfolds normally, which is to say abnormally: three girls, sixty starving people — and Marvin Gaye. Standing in a corner, smoking his John Player Specials, Bennani observes us: he’s at the zoo. His bodyguard, who plays with a nonexistent earpiece, drinks beer after beer: it’s free, because who would dare ask for money from such a massive guy? From time to time, he inspects.”
“Inspects what?”
“Well, everything…he taps on the walls, like you do when you search for a hollow, with the palm of his left hand flat and little sudden knocks with the bent index finger of the other hand… He stares defiantly at the banner of the unionists. He sizes up the sandwiches, relieves them, if necessary, of their garniture (mortadella can be quite dangerous). He opens the door and examines the Avenue des Forces-Armées-Royales, so propitious to the rise of tanks. He comes to look at us from up close, with a suspicious air, as if we were cooking up an assassination attempt. He purports even to frisk the body of the little Najla, who escapes by screeching. He asks for identification from the landlord, who had come to check that everything was going okay. The landlord takes offense (he is after all in his own place), we nearly have an incident, the bodyguard has to rein himself in.
“So much so that we begin to feel sorry for him, this man with nothing to do. Ahmidouch asks him where he’s from. ‘Settat!’ he responds, as others might say New York or Paris. We look at each other, astonished — there’s a school for bodyguards at Settat? He misunderstands our hesitation. Menacingly:
“‘Do you have a problem with that?’
“Not at all, we explain to him. And the accusing index fingers are extended: he’s from Benahmed, him (the fat one) from Tata, him from Sefrou, him (the little guy) from Sidi-Bennour, I’m from Fkih Ben Salah…
“The strongman of Halles can’t believe it. He thought we were all sons of the upper class, bourgeois, loaded, from Casablanca or maybe even from Fes…And he finds out we’re as much of a bumpkin as he is! Dumbstruck (I’ve been wanting to say that for a while now), he goes to check that the avenue hasn’t changed directions. Then he comes back, as if some dawn is beginning to glow beneath his neurons. He murmurs:
“‘But you’re all sons of the masses…’
“A collective shudder courses through us. You have to remember that this story takes place in an age when three people out of two were part of the police, where snitches abounded, where you could be denounced by your own shadow — the bitch. Expressions like ‘sons of the masses’ that seem harmless today rang out at the time like a proclamation along the lines of: ‘I am Marxist-Leninist and I plan to overthrow the government.’
“In any case, the fact that Mr. Bodyguard used such a dangerous expression suggested to us that: 1) he was crazy; 2) he was a snitch; 3) he was drunk. The truth was probably a combination of the three (1+2+3).
“As soon as the words are heard and their dangerousness percolates in our brains, we disperse throughout the party hall, not wanting to finish the year in prison — we had competitions and exams to worry about. The bawdyguard follows us (he divides in two, in three, in umpteen), clinging to some of us, embracing others, smooching Najla and proclaiming urbi et ‘roubi, to the city and to us country folk, that he loves us all, on the whole and in the details. Bennani, standing in a corner, stunned, was like Napoleon looking on as Moscow burned, with no fire extinguisher.
“His bodyguard is crying now, so sloshed from the alcohol we could have set him ablaze with a snap of the fingers. He stammers, snot deforming his words:
“‘You are all sons of the masses…Like me.’
“He turns, by chance, toward the native of Sidi-Bennour.