‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ I tried to make up for my rudeness. ‘I’m sorry.’
She pressed her finger to my lips again. ‘You have nothing to apologise for, Younes. I understand. Maybe you were right, this isn’t the time or the place. I just needed you to know how I feel. It’s not just a childhood memory to me. I love you, and I have a perfect right to feel that way. There is no crime, no shame in love, except to sacrifice it, even for the best of reasons.’
She left the shop without another word, without turning back. Never in my life had I felt as alone as I did the moment she stepped out into the roar of the street.
15
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE was alive.
Río Salado heaved a sigh of relief.
One night, when she had almost given up hope, he phoned his mother to tell her he was all right. According to Madame Lamy, her son was rational. He spoke calmly, in simple phrases, and his breathing was normal. She asked why he had disappeared, where he was calling from, but Jean-Christophe answered with vague platitudes: there was more to the world than Río Salado, there were other places to explore. He was evasive about where he was living, how he was surviving, given that he had left with no money and no bags. Madame Lamy did not press him; she was happy simply to know her son was alive. She sensed there was something wrong, that Jean-Christophe was being rational as a means of hiding it; she was afraid that if she pushed him too hard, turned the knife in the wound, she might hurt him further.
Later, Jean-Christophe wrote a long letter to Isabelle telling her that he loved her, and regretting that he had not made things work. She thought the letter was a last testament of sorts; she cried her heart out, convinced that her spurned fiancé had thrown himself off a cliff or under a train after sending it. The postmark was illegible, so it was impossible to know where it had been posted.
Three months later, Fabrice received his letter, this one filled with apologies and regrets. Jean-Christophe admitted that he had been selfish, that, blinded by his passion, he had lost sight of what was important, had forgotten common decency and the loyalty he owed to Fabrice, whom he had known since primary school and whom he still thought of as his best friend . . . There was no return address.
Eight months later, Simon – who in the meantime had gone into partnership with Madame Cazenave to open a fashion house in Oran – received his letter. It included a recent photograph of Jean-Christophe in a soldier’s uniform, head shaved, holding his rifle. On the back it read: It’s a great life, thank you, Sergeant. The envelope had been postmarked somewhere in Khemis Miliana. Fabrice decided to go and find him, and Simon and I went with him to the local barracks, where we were told that for the past three or four years they had only been recruiting ‘natives’. They suggested we ask in Cherchell, but no one at the military school there or the one in Kolea had heard of Jean-Christophe. We checked with the garrisons in Algiers and Blida, but we could not find him. We were chasing a ghost. We went back to Río Salado exhausted and empty-handed.
Fabrice and Simon still had no idea why Jean-Christophe had left. They suspected Émilie had been cheating on him, but they could not be sure. Émilie did not seem to think she had done anything wrong. We saw her from time to time, in the bookshop helping Madame Lambert, or window-shopping on the main street. Jean-Christophe’s decision to join the army surprised a lot of people – it was something that would not have occurred to most boys in Río Salado. It was as though he was punishing himself. He had said nothing in his letters about the reason why he had turned his back on his freedom, his family, his village in favour of army regulations and a life of willing obedience.
Simon’s was the last letter.
I never received mine.
Émilie still came by to see me. Sometimes we just stood and stared at each other, not saying a word, not even a greeting. Was there anything left to say? We had said all we had to say to one another. Émilie believed I needed time, and was prepared to be patient; I felt that there could never be anything between us, but how could I convince her of this without offending her or outraging the whole village? Her suggestion that we should be together was impossible, unnatural. I was distraught, I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing. Émilie did not try to rush me, but she did everything in her power to keep in touch. She thought I was feeling guilty about Jean-Christophe and that sooner or later I would get over it, that her great dark eyes would wear me down, would overcome my inhibitions. Now that we knew that Jean-Christophe was alive and well, things between us were less tense, but though he was not here, his absence was the gulf that separated us, cast a shadow over our thoughts, clouded our plans. Every time she came, Émilie would see it in my face. She would arrive with some speech she had spent the night preparing, but when the moment came, her courage failed her. She no longer dared to take my hand or place her finger on my lips.
She invented bizarre ailments so that she could come to the pharmacy for some exotic medication. I would jot everything down on my notepad, call her when her prescription arrived. When she came to collect it, she would think for a moment, make some trivial comment, ask some anodyne question about how she should take the medication and then leave. She desperately hoped she could force me to react, trigger some realisation that would allow her to open her heart to me again. I did nothing to encourage her, pretended not to notice her mute insistence, struggled not to give in, convinced that if I showed any weakness she would redouble her efforts.
Though I reluctantly persevered in this crude strategy, I felt heartsick. Every time Émilie came into the shop – or rather every time she left – I realised that she occupied my every waking thought. At night, I could not sleep until I had summoned up her every gesture, her every silence. During the day as I worked behind the counter, waiting for her to appear, every customer who stepped through the door reminded me of her absence, and I found myself pining for her. I flinched every time I heard the door chime, became irritable when I realised it wasn’t her. What was happening to me? Why did I hate myself for being a sensible young man? Should decency prevail over honesty? What was love if it could not triumph over blasphemy and sacrilege, if it bowed before taboos, if it did not stay true to its own wild obsession? Seeing Émilie heartbroken seemed to me to be worse than breaking my promise to her mother, worse than all the blasphemies in the world.
‘How much longer is this going to go on?’ she finally asked me.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course you know. I’m talking about us . . . Why are you treating me like this? I come to this dingy little pharmacy to see you, and you pretend you can’t see that I’m suffering, that I’m hanging on, that I’m waiting. It’s as though you want to humiliate me. Why? What have you got against me?’
‘I . . .’
‘Is it because I’m a Christian and you’re a Muslim?’
‘No.’
‘What, then? Don’t tell me you don’t care about me, that you don’t feel anything. I’m a woman, I can sense these things. I don’t understand what the problem is. I’ve told you how I feel about you; what more can I do?’
She was angry and tired, close to tears, her fists clenched as though she wanted to grab me by the throat and shake me until I came apart.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can’t what?’
I felt embarrassed and miserable. Like Émilie, I was infuriated by my cowardice, my indecisiveness, my inability to give her back her freedom and her dignity, even if I knew that whatever was between us could not last. I felt that I was lying, that I was somehow testing myself even though there was nothing to prove, nothing to overcome. Was I trying to punish myself? How could I decide? Émilie was right, I did have feelings for her, but every time I tried to accept the fact, my heart rebelled. What would this love be that was built on sacrilege, with no blessing, no dignity? How could it survive the scorn and contempt that would rain down on it?