‘My names is Costa.’ The driver spoke suddenly. ‘Coco to my friends.’
He shot Germaine a glance and, seeing her smile politely, went on:
‘I’m Greek.’
He shifted in his seat.
‘I own a half-share in this truck. I might not look like a rich man, but it’s true. Soon I’ll be my own boss and I will never have to leave my office. The men in the back, they are Italian. They can unload a steamship in half a day. They have been hauliers since they were in their mother’s womb.’
His big eyes, set in rolls of fat, twinkled now.
‘You know, madame, you look just like my cousin Mélina. When we arrived this morning, I thought I was seeing things. It’s incredible how much you look like her. You have the same hair, the same eyes, you are the same height. I don’t suppose you’re Greek, madame?
‘No, monsieur.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘From Oran. Fourth generation.’
‘Really? Perhaps one of your ancestors crossed swords with the patron saint of Arabs. Me, I have only been in Algeria fifteen years. I was a sailor, we put into port here, and it was here I met Berthe in a funduq. The moment I set eyes on her, I thought, this is where I will stay. I married Berthe and we settled in La Scalera. Oran is a beautiful city.’
‘It is,’ Germaine said sadly. ‘A very beautiful city.’
The driver swerved to avoid two donkeys standing in the middle of the road. The furniture in the back of the truck groaned and the Italian movers swore loudly in their own language.
The driver straightened up the truck and accelerated hard enough to blow a gasket.
‘Cut your chatter and keep your eyes on the road, Coco,’ one of the Italians yelled.
The driver nodded and fell silent.
A lush landscape flashed past, orange groves and vineyards jostling for space across the plains and the hills. Here and there, on rocky outcrops overlooking the scrubland, were beautiful farmhouses, ringed by majestic trees and lavish gardens, the driveways leading to them lined with olive trees and willowy palms. Every now and then we would see a colonial farmer walking his fields, or on horseback, galloping flat out towards some unseen joy. Then, without warning, like a pockmark in this fairytale landscape, we would see some squalid shack, crushed by the weight of poverty and the evil eye. Some of these shacks, out of a sense of decency, were hidden behind screens of tall cacti – all we could see was the ramshackle roof, which looked about to collapse on the people below; others clung to the rocky hillsides, their doorways ugly as a toothless smile, their cob walls pale and pitted as a death mask.
The driver turned to Germaine again and said:
‘It’s incredible how much you look like my cousin Mélina.’
2. Río Salado
8
I LOVE Río Salado – the place the Romans called Fulmen Salsum and one we now call El Malah. I have loved this town all my life; I cannot imagine growing old beneath any other sky, cannot imagine dying far from these ghosts. It was a beautiful colonial village with leafy streets lined with magnificent houses. The main square, where dances were held and famous musical troupes came to play, unfurled its flagstone carpet a stone’s throw from the steps of the town hall, flanked by tall palm trees strung together by garlands studded with Chinese lanterns. The great jazz musician Aimé Barelli performed here, and bandleader Xavier Cugat with his famous chihuahua, as well as Jacques Hélian and Pérez Prado. The town attracted artists and orchestras that even Oran, for all its charm and its standing as the capital of the West, could not afford. Río Salado liked to flaunt its wealth, to avenge itself on all those who for years had written it off. The ostentatious mansions that lined the main street were the town’s way of telling passers-by that ostentation was a virtue if it meant refuting others’ preconceptions, if it meant enduring every hardship in order to catch the moon. The land here had once been a stony wilderness left to lizards, the only human soul a shepherd passing, never to return; it was a landscape of scrubland and dry riverbeds, the domain of boars and hyenas – a land forgotten by men and angels. Those pilgrims who passed this way raced through like gusts of wind as though it were a cursed cemetery. Later, exiles and nomads, Spaniards mostly, laid claim to this desolate land, which mirrored their suffering. These men rolled up their sleeves and set about taming this savage landscape. They uprooted the mastic trees and replaced them with vineyards, ploughed and hoed the wasteland to create farms, and from their Herculean efforts Río Salado blossomed, as green shoots grew over mass graves.
Nestled amid hundreds of vineyards and wine cellars, Río Salado was a town to be savoured, like one of its own vintages. Though there were chill January days when the sky was streaked with snow, the town had an aura of perpetual summer about it. The contented inhabitants went joyfully about their business, coming together at sunset to share a drink or some piece of scandal or gossip. Their braying laughter or their righteous anger could be heard for miles around.
‘You’ll like it here,’ my uncle promised as he greeted Germaine and me on the steps of our new home.
The majority of the inhabitants of Río Salado were Spaniards and Jews, who were fiercely proud of having built their houses with their bare hands, of having snatched from this dry, pitted land sweet grapes that would have delighted even the gods of Olympus. They were friendly, impulsive people who would shout across the street to one other, hands cupped like megaphones. They knew each other so well that it was as if they had all been cast from the same mould. It was utterly unlike Oran, where to go from one neighbourhood to another was like moving between centuries, between different planets. Río Salado was easygoing and broad-minded; even the church, which stood next to the town hall, was set back from the square so as not to disturb revellers.
My uncle was right. Río Salado was the perfect place to start afresh. We lived on a hill to the east of the village in a large, bright, airy house set in magnificent gardens and with a small balcony that overlooked a sea of vineyards. The ground floor had been converted into a pharmacy, with a small back office lined with shelves and compartments. A spiral staircase led to the first-floor living room, off which were three large bedrooms and a tiled bathroom with an iron bathtub with claw feet in the shape of lion’s paws cast in bronze. I felt at home here from the moment I first stood on the sunlit balcony watching a partridge soar above the vineyards, and felt myself soar with it.
I was overjoyed. Having been born in the countryside, here in Río Salado I rediscovered the familiar sights and smells of my childhood, the smell of the newly ploughed earth, the silent hills. I was a farmer’s son again, happy to discover that the city clothes I had been forced to wear for so long had not warped my soul. The city was an illusion, the countryside a joy that was constantly renewed, a place where day breaks like the dawn of the world, where nightfall brings with it perfect peace. From the first, I loved Río Salado. It was a blessed place and I could easily imagine gods and titans finding rest here. It was a place of serenity, undisturbed by primordial demons. Even when the jackals came at night to prowl the sleeping town, I felt like going with them, following them into deep forest. Sometimes I would go out on to the balcony to watch them, sly shadows slinking through the vineyards; I could stand there for hours listening for every hushed sound, gazing at the moon, which dipped and seemed to brush my eyelashes.
And then there was Émilie.
The first time I saw her, she was sitting on the porch outside the pharmacy, toying with the laces of her boots. She was a pretty girl with timorous coal-black eyes. I could have mistaken her for an angel were it not that her face, so white it looked like marble, bore the unmistakable sign of some terrible illness.