Then he had made a short walk along the outside of the wall and had met two other dogs coming toward him with similar prizes. Finally he had come upon what he was looking for: it was only an infant, and in all likelihood it had been killed that morning. Wrapped in the pages of some old numbers of L’Echo d’Alger, it had been tossed into a shallow ditch. After questioning several people who had been outside the gate that morning he was able to ascertain that a certain Yamina ben Rhaissa had been seen shortly after sunrise entering the gate, and that this was not a regular occurrence. He had no difficulty in locating Yamina; she lived nearby with her mother. At first she had denied hysterically all knowledge of the crime, but when he had taken her alone out of the house to the edge of the village and had talked with her in what he considered a “reasonable” fashion for five minutes she had calmly told him the entire story. Not the least surprising part of her tale was the fact that she had been able to conceal her pregnancy from her mother, or so she said. The lieutenant had been inclined to disbelieve this until he reflected upon the number of undergarments worn by the women of the region; then he decided that she was telling the truth. She had got the older woman out of the house by means of a stratagem, had given birth to the infant, strangled it and deposited it outside the gate wrapped in newspaper. By the time her mother had returned, she was already washing the floor.
Yamina’s principal interest at this point seemed to be in finding out from the lieutenant the names of the persons who had made it possible for him to find her. She was intrigued by his swift detection of her act, and she told him so. This primitive insouciance rather amused him, and for a quarter of an hour or so he actually allowed himself to consider how he could best arrange to spend the night with her. But by the time he had made her walk with him down the hill to the road where the truck was waiting, already he viewed his fantasies of a few minutes back with astonishment. He canceled the visit to Beni Isguen and took the girl straight to his headquarters. Then he remembered the infant. Seeing that Yamina was safely locked up, he hurried with a soldier to the spot and collected for evidence what small parts of the body were still left. It was on the basis of these few bits of flesh that Yamina was installed in the local prison, pending removal to Algiers for trial. But the trial never took place. During the third night of her imprisonment a gray scorpion, on its way along the earthen floor of her cell, discovered an unexpected and welcome warmth in one corner, and took refuge there. When Yamina stirred in her sleep, the inevitable occurred. The sting entered the nape of the neck; she never recovered consciousness. The news of her death quickly spread around the town, with the detail of the scorpion missing from the telling of it, so that the final and, as it were, official native version was that the girl had been assaulted by the entire garrison, including the lieutenant, and thereafter conveniently murdered. Naturally, it was not everyone who lent complete credence to the tale, but there was the indisputable fact that she had died while in French custody. Whatever the natives believed, the prestige of the lieutenant went into a definite decline.
The lieutenant’s sudden unpopularity had immediate results: the workmen failed to appear at his house in order to continue the construction of the new salon. To be sure, the mason did arrive, only to sit in the garden all morning with Ahmed the houseboy, trying to persuade him (and in the end successfully) not to remain another day in the employ of such a monster. And the lieutenant had the quite correct impression that they were going out of their way to avoid meeting him in the street. The women especially seemed to fear his presence. When the news got around that he was in the neighborhood the streets cleared of themselves; all he heard as he walked along was the bolting of doors. If men passed it was with their eyes averted. These things constituted a blow to his prestige as an administrator, but they affected him rather less than the discovery, made the very day he took to his bed with a singular combination of cramps, dizziness and nausea, that his cook, who for some reason had stayed on with him, was a first cousin of the late Yamina.
The arrival of a letter from his commanding officer in Algiers made him no happier. There was no question, it said, of the justice of his procedure: the bits of evidence were in a jar of formaldehyde at the Tribunal of Bou Noura, and the girl had confessed. But it did criticize the lieutenant’s negligence, and, which was more painful to him, it raised the question of his fitness to deal with the “native psychology.”
He lay in his bed and looked at the ceiling; he felt weak and unhappy. It was nearly time for Jacqueline to come and prepare him his noonday consommé. (At the first cramp he had immediately got rid of his cook; he knew that much about dealing with the native psychology.) Jacqueline had been born in Bou Noura of an Arab father—at least, so it was said, and from tier features and complexion it was easy to believe—and a French mother who had died shortly after her birth. What the Frenchwoman had been doing in Bou Noura all alone no one ever knew. But it was all in the distant past; Jacqueline had been taken in by the Peres Blancs and raised in the Mission. She knew all the songs the Fathers labored so diligently to teach the children-indeed, she was the only one who did know them. Besides learning to sing and pray she had also learned how to cook, which last talent proved to be a true blessing for the Mission since the unfortunate Fathers had been living on the local cuisine for many years and all suffered with their livers. When Father Lebrun had learned of the lieutenant’s dilemma he straightway had volunteered to send Jacqueline to replace his cook and prepare him two simple meals a day. The Father had come himself the first day, and after looking at the lieutenant had decided that there would be no danger in letting her visit him, at least for a few days. He relied upon Jacqueline to warn him of her patient’s progress, because once he was on the road to recovery, the lieutenant’s behavior could no longer be counted on. He had said, looking down at him as he lay in his tousled bed: “I leave her in your hands, and you in God’s.” The lieutenant had understood what he meant, and he had tried to smile, but he felt too sick. Still, now as he thought of it he smiled, since he considered Jacqueline a wretched, skinny thing at whom no one would look twice.
She was late that noon, and when she arrived she was in a breathless state because Corporal Dupeyrier had stopped her near the Zaouia and given her a very important message for him. It was a matter of a foreigner, an American, who had lost his passport.
“An American?” echoed the lieutenant. “In Bou Noura?” Yes, said Jacqueline. He was here with his wife, they were at Abdelkader’s pension (which was the only place they could have been, since it was the only hostelry of any sort in the region), and they had already been in Bou Noura several days. She had even seen the gentleman: a young man.
“Well,” said the lieutenant, “I’m hungry. How about a little rice today? Have you time to prepare it?”
“Ah, yes, monsieur. But he told me to tell you that it is important you see the American today.”
“What are you talking about? Why should I see him? I can’t find his passport for him. When you go back to the Mission, pass by the Poste and tell Corporal Dupeyrier to tell the American he must go to Algiers, to his consul. If he doesn’t already know it,” he added.
“Ah, ce n’est pas pour ça! It’s because he accused Monsieur Abdelkader of stealing the passport.”
“What?” roared the lieutenant, sitting up.
“Yes. He went yesterday to file a complaint. And Monsieur Abdelkader says that you will oblige him to retract it. That’s why you must see him today.” Jacqueline, obviously delighted with the degree of his reaction, went into the kitchen and began to rattle the utensils loudly. She was carried away by the idea of her importance.