‘What makes you think I’m pissed off with you?’
‘Well, here I am about to tell you a wonderful piece of news and you have a face that could stop a clock.’
‘Go on, then, tell me, maybe it’ll cheer me up.’
‘Oh, it will! Madame Cazenave offered me her daughter’s hand in marriage, and I accepted. But don’t say anything, it’s not official yet.’
I was speechless.
In the restaurant window, my reflection was still sitting impassively, but inside I was falling apart.
Simon was trembling with excitement – the same Simon who had called Émilie a ‘preying mantis’ and a ‘pricktease’! I could no longer take in what he was saying; all I could see was the jubilation in his eyes, his smile, his nervous fingers tearing a piece of bread, crumpling his napkin, hesitating between knife and fork, his whole body quivering with happiness . . . He wolfed down the kebabs, drank his coffee, smoked a cigarette, talking all the while. Then he got to his feet, and saying something that I couldn’t hear for the shrieking in my head, put on his coat and left, waving to me through the window before he disappeared.
I sat glued to my chair, my mind a blank. I did not come to myself until the waiter came to tell me the restaurant was closing.
Simon’s plan did not remain a secret for long. In a few short weeks his secret machinations were common knowledge. In Río Salado, when he drove past, people waved and shouted ‘You lucky devil!’; girls stopped Émilie in the street to congratulate her. Malicious gossips said that Madame Cazenave had sold her daughter out. Everyone else simply looked forward to the celebrations.
Autumn tiptoed away and the winter that followed was particularly harsh. Spring arrived, and with it the promise of a glorious summer. The hills and plains were cloaked in deep lush green. The Cazenaves and the Benyamins planned to celebrate their children’s engagement in May and their wedding with the first grape harvests.
A few days before the engagement party, just as I was bringing down the shutters, Émilie showed up. She pushed me back inside the pharmacy. She had crept through the village wearing a peasant shawl, a nondescript grey dress and flat shoes so that no one would recognise her.
She was so upset, she did not call me Monsieur Jonas.
‘I suppose you’ve heard. My mother forced my hand. She wants me to marry Simon. I don’t know how she got me to say yes, but nothing is sealed. Everything depends on you, Younes.’
She was ashen. She had lost weight and her eyes had lost their power to command. She seized my wrists and, trembling, pulled me to her.
‘Say yes,’ she said, choking. ‘Just say yes and I’ll call it all off.’
Fear blighted her beauty, she looked as though she had just recovered from some terrible illness. Wisps of tangled hair spilled out of the scarf, her lips trembled and her anxious eyes glanced from me to the street. Her shoes were white with chalk dust, her dress smelled of the vines, her throat glistened with sweat. She had clearly gone around the village and cut through the fields to get here without arousing curiosity.
‘Say it, Younes. Tell me you love me like I love you, that I mean as much to you as you do to me. Take me in your arms and hold me . . . You’re my destiny, Younes, the life I want to live, the risk I want to take. I will follow you to the ends of the earth. I love you . . . Nothing and no one is more important to me. For the love of God, say yes . . .’
I said nothing. I stood dazed. Frozen. Speechless. Agonisingly silent.
‘Say something, for God’s sake, say anything. Say yes, say no, but don’t just stand there! What’s the matter with you? Have you lost your voice? Don’t torment me like this, just say something.’
She became more heated; she could not stand still, and her eyes blazed.
‘What am I supposed to think, Younes? What does this silence mean? That I’m a fool? You’re a monster . . . a monster!’
She beat her fists against my chest, piteous and angry.
‘There’s not a grain of humanity in you, Younes. You are the worst thing that has ever happened to me.’
She slapped my face, pounded on my chest again, screamed at me to drown out her sobs, and still I stood there speechless. I felt ashamed at what I was putting her through, ashamed that all I could do was stand there, mute and lifeless and a scarecrow.
‘I hate you, Younes. I’ll never forgive you for this, never . . .’
And she fled.
The following morning, a little boy brought me a package. He didn’t tell me who had sent it. I removed the paper, carefully. I knew instinctively what I would find. Inside was a book about the French islands of the Caribbean, and when I opened the cover, I found the remains of a rose as old as time itself; the rose I had slipped between the pages of this very book a million years before, while Germaine was treating Émilie in the back office.
The evening of their engagement party I spent in Oran with Germaine’s family. I told Simon that there had been a death in the family.
The wedding was planned for the start of the grape harvest. This time, Simon insisted, I was not to leave Río Salado under any circumstances. He asked Fabrice to keep an eye on me. I had no intention of absconding. It would be ridiculous. What would my friends and everyone else in the village think? How could I not attend the wedding without arousing suspicion? Or was it more honest to arouse suspicion? None of this was Simon’s fault. Simon would have done anything for me, just as he would for Fabrice. How would it look if I ruined the happiest day of his life?
I bought a suit and a pair of dress shoes for the ceremony.
As the wedding party drove through the village in a thunderous roar of car horns, I put on the suit and walked out to the big white house on the marabout road. A neighbour offered to give me a lift, but I said no. I needed to walk, to synchronise my footsteps to the rhythm of my thoughts, to deal with them rationally one by one.
The sky was cloudy and a fresh breeze whipped my face. Outside the village, I walked past the Jewish cemetery, and coming to the marabout road, I stopped and stood at the crossroads, looking up at the festive lights at Madame Cazenave’s house.
A light drizzle had begun to fall, as if to rouse me from my thoughts.
Only after something is done do we truly realise it cannot be undone. Never had a night seemed to me so ill-omened; never had a celebration seemed to me so unjust, so cruel. The music drifting on the breeze sounded like an incantation that conjured me like a demon. I felt excluded from the joy of these people as they laughed and danced. I thought about the terrible waste my life had become . . . How? How could I have come so close to happiness and not had the courage to seize it with both hands? What terrible sin had I committed that I was forced to watch love seep though my fingers like blood from a wound? What is love when all it can do is survey the damage? What are its myths and legends, its victories and its miracles if a lover is not prepared to rise above, to brave the thunderbolt, to renounce eternal happiness for one kiss, one embrace, one moment with his beloved? Regret coursed through my veins like a poisonous sap, swelled my heart with loathsome fury. I hated myself, this useless burden abandoned by the roadside.
I went home, drunk on grief, leaning against walls so as not to fall. My bedroom seemed unwilling to accept me. I slumped against the door, eyes closed, and listened as every fibre of my being clanged. I got up and trudged to the window as though it was not my bedroom but a desert I was crossing.
A lightning flash lit up the shadows. Rain was falling gently. The window panes themselves were weeping. Be careful, Younes, I thought, you’re wallowing in self-pity. But what did that matter? This was what I saw: the windows crying. I wanted to see tears streak the window panes, I wanted to feel sorry for myself, I wanted to dissolve body and soul into my grief.
Maybe it’s for the best, I thought, Émilie was not meant for me. It’s as simple as that. You cannot change what is written in the stars. Lies! Later, much later, I would come to this realisation: nothing is written. If it were, there would be no need for trials, morality would be an ageing hag and shame would not blush in the presence of virtue. Though there are things beyond our understanding, for the most part we are the architects of our own unhappiness. We fashion our faults with our own hands, and no one can boast that he is less to be pitied than his neighbour. As for what we call fate, it is nothing but our own dogged refusal to accept the consequences of our weaknesses, great and small.