‘Serves him right,’ yelled a soldier. ‘If he doesn’t like it, he can take his business elsewhere.’
‘That goes for you too, Sergeant,’ the madame said. ‘You’re no saint yourself.’
The soldier shrank back. The madame was clearly in a bad mood, and André realised that things might not go his way. He managed to persuade her to let Jean-Christophe in, given his height, but could do nothing for me.
‘He’s just a kid, Dédé,’ she said. ‘He still smells of mother’s milk. I can turn a blind eye to your blonde friend here, but this little cherub with his blue eyes, there’s no way. He’d be raped in the corridor before he even got to a room.’
André made no attempt to insist. The madame was not the sort to go back on a decision. She told me I could wait for my friends behind the counter, instructing me not to touch anything or speak to anyone. I felt relieved. Now that I had seen the brothel, I didn’t want to go any farther; the place turned my stomach.
In the waiting room, veiled by curtains of smoke, the hunters, looking shrunken and dazed, eyed their prey. Some of the men were drunk and they grumbled and jostled. The prostitutes were displayed on a long upholstered bench in an alcove carved into the wall of the corridor that led to the bedrooms. They sat facing the customers, some of them barely dressed, others squeezed into see-through corselets. It looked like a painting of ruined concubines by a despondent Delacroix. There were big girls rippling with rolls of fat, breasts stuffed into bras the size of hammocks; scrawny women with dark sunken eyes who looked as though they had been dragged from their deathbeds; brunettes in cheap blonde wigs; blondes wearing so much make-up they looked like clowns, one breast casually exposed. The women sat in silence, patiently scratching their crotches, smoking, eyeing the cattle opposite.
Sitting behind the counter, I contemplated this world and regretted ever having ventured inside. It smelled of adulterated wine and the stench of rutting flesh. A terrible tension hung in the room like some noxious gas. One spark, one misjudged comment, one wrong look and the whole place could go up . . . The decor, although contrived and naïve, did its best to be cheery: delicate wall hangings framed with velvet, gilded mirrors, cheap paintings of nymphs dressed as Eve, matching lamps and mosaic walls, empty love seats in the alcoves. But the customers seemed oblivious to all this; they could see only the half-naked girls on the long bench. Veins throbbing in their necks, all but pawing the ground, they were eager to get started.
I was beginning to get bored. Jean-Christophe disappeared with some fat old woman, followed by Joe leading two girls caked in make-up. André had vanished.
The owner offered me a bowl of toasted almonds and promised that when I came of age I could have her prettiest girl.
‘No hard feelings, kid?’
‘No hard feelings, Madame.’
‘You’re sweet . . . and for God’s sake don’t call me Madame, it gives me constipation.’
Calmer now, the woman was trying to make peace. I was terrified she might do me a ‘favour’ and allow me to choose from the sweaty flesh laid out on the bench.
‘Sure you’re not angry with me?’
‘I’m not, honestly,’ I yelped, now convinced she would overlook my age and pick out a girl for me. ‘Actually,’ I said quickly, to cover every eventuality, ‘I didn’t want to come in the first place. I’m not ready.’
‘You’re right, kid. When it comes to dealing with women, you’re never ready . . . There’s lemonade behind you if you’re thirsty. It’s on the house.’
She left me and disappeared into the corridor to make sure everything was okay.
It was then that I saw her. She had just finished with a client and gone back to sit with her co-workers on the bench. Her arrival created a ripple in the waiting room. One burly soldier loudly announced that he was first in the queue, causing a storm of protests. I paid no attention. Suddenly the noise in the room seemed to die away; even the room had vanished. There was only her. It was as if a shooting star had come from nowhere and traced a halo of light around her. I recognised her at once, though this was the last place I would have expected to see her. She did not seem to have aged at all. Her body, in a tight-fitting, lowcut dress, was still that of an adolescent girl, her hair spilled over her shoulders just as I remembered it, her cheekbones were as perfectly chiselled as ever. It was Hadda . . . Hadda the beautiful, the woman I had secretly loved, the object of my first boyish fantasies. How could Hadda, who simply by stepping into the courtyard of our house lit it up like the sun, have wound up in this seedy dive?
I was shocked, frozen with disbelief.
Seeing her, I was suddenly transported back to a morning several years before. I was sitting in the courtyard outside our tiny room in Jenane Jato, listening to the laughter and the chatter of our neighbours, the squealing of their children. Hadda was not laughing. She was sad. I remembered watching her place her hand on the low table, palm upwards, and say: ‘Tell me what you see, Batoul, I need to know. I can’t go on like this,’ and Batoul saying, ‘I see you surrounded by many men, Hadda. But there is little happiness . . . It looks like a dream, yet it is not a dream.’
Batoul had been right. Hadda was surrounded by many men, but there was little joy. This place where she had washed up, with its sequins and spangles, its subdued lighting and extravagant decor, was dream-like, yet it was not a dream. I stood behind the counter, open-mouthed, unable to give voice to the terrible feeling that crept over me like a fog and made me feel as though I might go mad.
The burly soldier with the shaven head grabbed two men and smashed their heads against the wall. After that, things calmed down somewhat. He glared around him, nostrils flaring, and when he realised that no one else was prepared to take him on, let go of the two men and strode over to Hadda, grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her to her feet. In the silence as they walked down the corridor, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.
I rushed out into the street, choking for breath.
André, Jean-Christophe and Joe found me sitting, dumbstruck, on a step, and assuming it was because the madame had refused to let me in, they asked no questions. Jean-Christophe was crimson with embarrassment. Things, apparently, had not gone well. André had eyes only for his Yank, and seemed prepared to grant his every wish. He suggested to Jean-Christophe and me that we go and find Simon and Fabrice and meet up later at the Majestic, one of the most fashionable brasseries in the new town.
The six of us spent the rest of the evening in a high-class restaurant at André’s expense. Joe could not hold his wine. After we had eaten, he started acting up. It started with him pestering a journalist who was quietly trying to put the finishing touches to a story. Joe wandered over to tell the man about his exploits – how he had fought at the front, how many times he had risked his life. The journalist, a patient, polite man, heard him out, clearly eager to get back to his work, irritated but too shy to say anything. He was visibly relieved when André went to collect his soldier friend. Joe came back and joined us, but he was restless and volatile. From time to time he turned back to the journalist and bellowed across the tables: ‘I want a big headline, John, I want to see my face on the front page. You need a photo, it’s no problem, okay, John? I’m counting on you.’ Realising he had no hope of finishing his story with this lunatic nearby, the journalist picked up his rough draft, dropped some money on the table and left.
‘You know who that is?’ Joe said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. ‘That’s John Steinbeck. He’s a writer, a war correspondent with the Herald Tribune. He wrote a piece about my regiment.’
After the journalist had left, Joe looked for other prey. He went up to the bar and asked them to play some Glenn Miller. Then he climbed on to his chair, stood at attention, and sang ‘Home on the Range’. Later, egged on by a bunch of Americans having dinner on the terrace, he forced one of the waiters to repeat after him the lyrics to ‘You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To’. Gradually, the laughter faded to smiles and the smiles to frowns and people began to ask André to take his Yank elsewhere. Joe was no longer the biddable young man he had been during the day. He was drunk now. His eyes bloodshot, his lips flecked with spittle, he clambered up on the table and began to tap-dance, sending cutlery and crockery flying and glasses and bottles crashing to the floor. The manager came over and politely asked him to stop, but Joe, who did not take kindly to the request, punched the man in the face. Two waiters rushed to help their boss and were immediately sent flying. Women started crying. André grabbed his protégé, begging him to calm down, but Joe was no longer listening. He lashed out in all directions and the brawl spread to other customers, then the soldiers on the terrace waded in and chairs started flying. It was chaos.