‘You’re right, Simon. Let’s give it time – time can’t keep a secret, it’s bound to tell us some day.’
‘Is it something to do with Isabelle?’
‘Simon, please, just drop it.’
That weekend I saw Jean-Christophe, from afar. I was coming out of the shoemaker’s and he was coming out of the town hall. He was so thin he looked six inches taller. His hair was shaved, with a single blonde lock that fell over his forehead. He wore a thick coat in spite of the weather and limped slightly, leaning on a walking stick. Isabelle was with him, holding his arm. I had never seen her so beautiful, so down-to-earth. Her humility was almost admirable. They were walking slowly and chatting. It was Isabelle who did the talking; Jean-Christophe just nodded from time to time. They seemed to glow with a sort of serene happiness, something ageless and enduring. I could not help but feel a pang of affection for them, this couple who could grow and mellow in silence and in questioning, made stronger by the tribulations they had come through together. I felt my heart go out to them, like a prayer that their reunion might last for ever. Perhaps because seeing them reminded me of my uncle and Germaine strolling through the orange groves. Seeing them together again, it was as though nothing had ever happened. I realised that I could not but go on being fond of one and loving the other. And yet I felt overwhelmed by a grief as terrible as I had felt when my uncle had died.
I felt tears prick my eyes, and I cursed Jean-Christophe for moving on with his life and leaving me stranded on the platform. I felt as though he had dismissed me on the basis of one snap judgement. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to forgive me. Forgive me for what? What had I done? I felt I had more than paid for my loyalty; that my misdeed had hurt me first and foremost, hurt me much more than it had hurt others. It was strange. I was love and hate tied up in a single package, imprisoned in a straitjacket. I felt myself slipping towards something I could not quite define that was pulling me in all directions, distorting my perceptions, my thoughts, the very fibres of my being, like a werewolf transforming in all his monstrosity under cover of darkness. I was consumed by an inner fury that was insidious, corrosive. I was jealous when I saw others find their place in the world even as mine was crumbling around me. I was jealous when I saw Simon and Émilie walking together on the avenue, their little boy running on ahead; jealous of the intimacy they shared, an intimacy that excluded me; jealous of the aura that surrounded Jean-Christophe and Isabelle; jealous of every couple I met in Río Salado, in Lourmel, in Oran, of the couples I stumbled on by accident, as I roamed restlessly like the god of a shattered universe who realises that he does not have the energy to re-create a new one. I found myself spending the empty days wandering through the Muslim neighbourhoods of Oran, sitting at tables with people I didn’t know, whose very presence deepened my loneliness. I found myself back in Medina J’dida, drinking water flavoured with oil of cade, getting to know an ageing Mozabite bookseller in a baggy sarouel, learning from a young imam of staggering erudition, listening to the ragged shoeshine boys – the yaouleds – talking about the war that was ripping Algeria apart. They knew much more about it than did I, the educated, intelligent pharmacist. I began to memorise names hitherto unknown to me, names that sounded in my mouth like the call of the muezzin: Ben M’hidi, Zabana, Boudiaf, Abane Ramdane, Hamou Boutlilis, the Soummam, the Ouarsenis, Djebel Llouh, Ali la Pointe, the names of places and of heroes of a populist movement that I had never for a moment suspected was so sincere, so committed.
Was I trying to compensate for the defection of my friends . . . ?
I went to Fabrice’s house up on the cliff road. He seemed happy to see me, but I could not bear Hélène’s aloofness. I never set foot in their house again. Whenever I ran into him, we would go to a café or a restaurant, but I politely declined any invitations to their house. I had no intention of putting up with his wife’s snobbishness. I once said as much to him. ‘You’re imagining things, Jonas,’ Fabrice said, piqued. ‘What made you think Hélène doesn’t like you? She’s a city girl, that’s all, she’s not like the girls round here. Oh, I admit she’s got some strange ideas, but that’s just the city in her . . .’ Even so, I did not go back to their house. I preferred to lose myself in the old quarters of Oran, in La Calère, around the Pasha Mosque and especially the Bey’s Palace, watching the boys squabbling at Raz-el-Ain. After a life of crippling shyness, I suddenly found myself shouting at referees at football matches, buying black-market tickets to bullfights to watch Luis Miguel Dominquin deal the death blow to a bull at Eckmühl arena. Suddenly I liked nothing better than the roar of the crowd; it kept me from brooding over things I did not want to think about. I became a keen fan of USMO, the Muslim football team. I went to boxing matches, and when a young Muslim boxer floored his opponent, I felt within myself a murderous rage I had never suspected. Their names were as intoxicating as a whiff of opium: Goudihb, Khalfi, Cherraka, the Sabbane brothers, Abdeslam, the extraordinary Moroccan. I barely recognised myself. Like a moth to a candle flame I was drawn to violence and to crowds. There could be no doubt: I was at war with myself.
Jean-Christophe married Isabelle at the end of the year. I found out the day after the wedding. No one had deigned to mention it to me, not even Simon, who – to his annoyance – had not been invited. Nor Fabrice, who had gone home at dawn so as not to have to apologise for I don’t know what. All this simply served to push me even further away from their world. It was appalling.
Jean-Christophe decided they should settle somewhere far from Río Salado. The village was not enough to satisfy his desire to make up for lost time; to atone for certain memories. Pépé Rucillio gave them a beautiful house in one of the most fashionable areas of Oran. I was on the village square when the newly-weds left. André drove them to the city in his car, with a huge truck filled with furniture and wedding gifts following behind. Even today, though I am an old man now, I can still hear the horns blaring as the car moved off; still feel the pain I felt that day. And yet, strangely, I was relieved to see them go; it was as though some major artery in my body, long blocked, was suddenly clear again.
People were leaving Río Salado in droves. I felt like a castaway adrift on an empty ocean. The streets, the vineyards and the orange groves, the gossip in the cafés, the farmers’ jokes, none of it meant anything to me now. Every morning I woke up eager for night to come so that I could retreat from the chaos of the day; every night I went to bed dreading the fact that I would wake again to this terrible emptiness. I began to leave Germaine to run the pharmacy and spent my time in the brothels of Oran. I never touched the prostitutes; I just listened to them recount their turbulent lives and pour scorn on their shattered dreams. I was comforted by their contempt for illusion. To tell the truth, I was looking for Hadda. Suddenly, for some reason, she mattered to me. I wanted to find her again, to find out if she still remembered me, to see if she knew anything that might help me find my mother. But even in this, I was lying to myself: Hadda had left Jenane Jato before the fire that had destroyed our old house. She could not possibly help me find my mother. But that was what I had planned to say to her to win her sympathy. I needed a friend, a confidant, someone I had known long ago, anyone who could offer me a feeling of closeness now that my friends in Río Salado had vanished.
The madame who ran the Camélia told me that Hadda had gone off with a pimp one night and never come back. I managed to track down the pimp – a hulking thug with hairy arms covered with tattoos of pierced hearts and profanities. He warned me not to get involved unless I wanted to end up in the obituary column of the local paper. That same day, stepping off a tram, I thought I saw my childhood friend Lucette walking with a baby in a pram – a chubby young woman in a trouser suit and a white canvas hat. But it could not have been Lucette – she would have seen my smile, recognised something in the blue of my eyes. In spite of her eloquent indifference, I followed this woman along the boulevard, then, realising that what I was doing was somehow indecent, I turned back.