It took a number of officers from the military police to overpower Joe, and the restaurant did not begin to relax until the MP’s jeep disappeared into the night with Joe inside.
Back in our room on the Boulevard des Chasseurs, I couldn’t get to sleep. All night I tossed and turned, unable to get the image of Hadda the prostitute out of my mind. Batoul’s voice echoed in my head, stirring up old fears, unearthing silences buried deep within me. It was as though I had seen a glimpse of some terrible catastrophe that would befall me. I buried my head under the pillow, trying to suffocate myself with it, but it was useless: the image of Hadda sitting half naked in that brothel turned and turned in my head like a dancer on a music box to the voice of Batoul the clairvoyant.
The following morning, I asked Fabrice to lend me some money, and I headed off on my own to Jenane Jato. This was the other side of Oran; no uniformed soldiers strutted about the streets here, and the air was filled with the stench of rotting prayers and hopes. I needed to see my mother and my sister, wanted to touch them with my own hands, hoping I might shake off the terrible sense of foreboding that had hounded me all night, that clung to me still . . .
But my terrible fears were proved right. Jenane Jato had changed since my last visit. The courtyard where we had lived stood empty; it looked as though a tornado had swept through and carried everyone off. There was barbed wire across the doorway, but someone had made a hole in it large enough for me to crawl through. The courtyard was filled with blackened rubble, rats’ dropping and cat shit. The metal cover of the well was warped and twisted. The doors and windows were all gone. Fire had gutted the left-hand side of the building; the walls had collapsed. A few charred beams still hung from the roof. Above them there was only the pitiless blue of the sky. Our tiny room lay in ruins, and here and there amid the rubble were broken kitchen implements and half-charred bundles of clothes.
‘There’s no one there.’ A voice rang out behind me.
It was Peg-Leg, propped against the doorway, wearing a gandurah that was too short for him. His face was gaunt, his toothless mouth gaped, a terrible maw his grey beard did little to hide. His arm was trembling and he was having trouble standing on his one good leg, which was pale now and covered with brownish pustules.
‘What happened here?’ I asked him.
‘Terrible things . . .’
He hobbled over to me, picking up a can as he passed. He turned it over to see if there might be anything inside worth salvaging, then threw it over his shoulder.
‘Look at this mess.’ He flung his arm wide. ‘It’s a terrible shame.’
Seeing me standing there, waiting, he went on:
‘I warned Bliss about it. This is a respectable house, I told him, you’ve no business putting that whore in with decent women; it’ll end in tears. But he wouldn’t listen to me. One night, a couple of drunks came round looking for her, but she already had a customer, so they tried their luck with Badra. You can imagine – they never knew what hit them. The widow’s two sons butchered them. After that, it was the whore’s turn. She defended herself better than her clients, but there were two of them. At some point, someone knocked over the oil lamp and the fire spread like lightning. It’s lucky it didn’t reach the other houses. The police arrested Badra and her sons and boarded up the house; it’s been like this for two years now. Some people say it’s haunted.’
‘What happened my mother?’
‘I’ve no idea. I do know that she survived the fire; I saw her with your little sister the next day on the corner of the street. They weren’t injured.’
‘What about Bliss?’
‘He disappeared.’
‘What about the other tenants? Maybe they know something . . .’
‘I don’t know where they went, sorry.’
I made my way back to the Boulevard des Chasseurs with a heavy heart. My friends pestered me to know where I’d been, but their questions simply infuriated me and I went out again and wandered the streets for hours. Again and again I found myself standing in the middle of a street, my head in my hands, trying to compose myself. My mother and my sister were safe, I told myself, and probably better off now than they had been. Batoul the psychic was never wrong – after all, she had predicted Hadda’s fate. My father would come back – it was written on the ripples of the water. My mother would not have to worry any more.
This was what I was thinking when suddenly I saw him . . .
My father!
I was sure it was him – I could have recognised his shadow in the darkness among ten thousand, among a hundred thousand men. It was my father. He had come back. Bent beneath the weight of a thick green coat he was wearing in spite of the heat, he was crossing a crowded square in the Village Nègre. I rushed to catch up with him, pushing through the crowded square, but it seemed that for every step forward, I was pushed two steps back. Not for a moment did I take my eyes off the figure of my father as he shambled away, limping slightly, bowed beneath the weight of his green jacket. I was terrified that if I lost sight of him, I might never find him again. But by the time I finally struggled free of the crowd and made it to the far side of the square, he had vanished.
I looked for him in the local cafés, in the bars, in the hammams . . . but he was gone.
I never saw my mother or my sister again. I do not know what became of them, whether they are alive still or dust mingled with the dust of ages. My father I saw several times. About once every ten years I would spot him in a crowded souk or on a building site; sometimes standing alone on his own, or in the doorway of an abandoned warehouse. I never managed to speak to him. Once, I followed him into a blind alley, certain that at last I had tracked him down, and was shocked to discover that the alley was deserted, there was no one waiting at the foot of the crumbling wall. Only when I realised that he always wore the same green jacket, which seemed to be untouched by time and weather, did I finally understand that the man I saw was not flesh and blood.
Even now, in my declining years, I still see him in the distance sometimes, bowed beneath the weight of his old green jacket, limping slowly towards his doom.
10
THE SEA looked smooth enough to walk on; not a wave lapped at the beach, not a ripple disturbed the glassy surface. It was a weekday and the beach belonged to us. Next to me, Fabrice lay on his back dozing, a book open over his face. Jean-Christophe was strutting along the water’s edge, showing off as always. The Sosa cousins, André and José, had set up a tent and a barbecue a hundred metres away and were waiting for the girls from Lourmel. Here and there a few families lay sunning themselves along the shore. Were it not for Simon’s antics, we might have been on a desert island.
The sun poured down like molten lead, and seagulls darted across the flawless sky, drunk on space and freedom. From time to time they skimmed the waves, like planes chasing each other and hedge-hopping, only to soar again to melt into the blue. In the distance, a trawler heading for port trailed a cloud of birds in its wake; it had been a good day’s fishing.