Mathias Énard - Street of Thieves

This news warmed my heart, even if I was a little wounded that she wasn’t doing it to see me again sooner and for longer, but for unfortunate financial reasons.

I made my decision, without waiting for the outcome of the afternoon interview. I gathered together all the cash that there could be in Sheikh Nureddin’s office, even the ten-cent pieces. I had almost fifteen or twenty thousand dirhams in bills and coins. More cash than anyone had ever seen, I could have taken a taxi to the suburb of Nador to find Meryem, say I’m taking this young woman away, here’s ten thousand dirhams for your trouble, no one would have objected.

It was April, the month of dust and lies.

I gathered my things together, the hundred or so thrillers took up so much space you wouldn’t believe, I emptied the boxes we had just gotten from Saudi Arabia to put them in: in all, with the Kashshaaf, The Stories of the Prophets, the dictionary, the books I liked, there were three big boxes; even some clothes had gone into each of the boxes; plus I took the Group’s laptop, the screen, the keyboard and two or three things I had to keep.

A real house moving, and nowhere to go.

When everything was ready, I left for the Free Zone in a bus; I left all my things at the Group, took only the cash and the laptop, that made me look important, a laptop. I thought Jean-François wouldn’t remember me, or else that the secretaries (very dark Moroccans, short skirts, black pantyhose, nice legs, disdain in their looks and voices) wouldn’t let me get to their boss, but no, ten minutes after I reached the office I was shaking hands with Jean-François; he addressed me formally with vous now, saying, aha, here’s Mr. Friend of the Série Noire, and all of a sudden the women in black stockings and miniskirts began regarding the young yokel who had just arrived as a human being; the boss disappeared very quickly, I was placed in a tiny room that adjoined the director’s office, a Frenchman appeared, handed me a book; there you are, he said, our business is to make these things into digital files, copy two pages of this on this computer for me. I took the book, put it on a stand, and copied it while the Frenchman looked at his watch, a big shiny timepiece, after two pages I said, okay that’s it, he replied, hey not bad, you’ve got something, let me look it over, my word it’s pretty good, wait a second. Jean-François reappeared, the other man called him Mr. Bourrelier, it looks good to me Mr. Bourrelier, he said, no problem, Jean-François looked at me smiling, and said I know a good thing when I see it, you go over the details together, Frédéric.

Frédéric called in the secretary, she took my papers, which she photocopied; Frédéric asked me when I could begin, and I thought a second: if Judit was arriving in Tangier tomorrow I’d want to spend some time with her. Next Monday? That’s fine with me, Frédéric replied. You’re paid by the page, 2,000 characters, 50 cents. That means about 100 euros for an average book. Then we deduct corrections, at 2 cents each. If you copy out 20 books a month, you get 2,000 euros, more or less, if the work is done well.

I made a quick calculation: to reach 20 books per month, let’s say 200 pages per day, you had to copy out 25 pages in 60 minutes. One page every two minutes, more or less. This Frédéric was an optimist. Or a slave driver, depending.

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to scan the books?”

“For some of them, no. For the ones with slightly transparent paper, it’s almost impossible, the results are erratic. The OCR doesn’t understand anything, and then you have to take the book apart, lay out the page, correct things, it ends up costing more.”

To me he sounded like he was speaking Chinese, but fine, he must have known what he was doing.

“Can I take the work home?”

“Yes, of course. But you have to work here at least five hours a day, for tax reasons.”

“Okay.”

The secretary had me sign a contract, the first one in my life.

“Good, see you Monday. And welcome.”

“Till Monday, yes. And thanks.”

“Thank you.”

I went to say good-bye to Jean-François, he shook my hand, saying, see you next week, then.

And I went back to Tangier. On the way, the sea shone.

Judit was arriving tomorrow. In fifteen days I’d be twenty. The world was a strange mixture of uncertainty and hope.

In the paper, still no news of who was responsible for the attack in Marrakesh.

So it was almost seven o’clock when I got back to the neighborhood; night was falling. I had had time to make a plan. First I wanted to clarify a few things; I felt full of energy. I went back to see the bookseller.

My heart dropped when I reached his shop; the display wasn’t out, but the metal shutters were raised. I had a lump in my throat, I gathered all my courage and pushed open the door; after all I had been coming to this place since I was fifteen or sixteen, I wasn’t going to let Sheikh Nureddin take it away from me.

The bookseller was sitting behind his desk, he lifted his head; on his face I saw surprise, then hatred, scorn, or pity. I had expected insults; I had imagined myself asking his forgiveness, he would have forgiven me, and we’d have resumed our conversations like before. He remained silent, staring at me, his brow knit; he said nothing; he was contemplating my stupidity, was drowning me in my own cowardliness; I was shrinking, crushed with shame; I couldn’t manage to speak, or to take out the envelope with the dirhams that I had naively prepared for him, I muttered a few words, hello, sorry, I choked and turned tail, fled once again, fled faced with myself; I left at a run; there are things that can’t be fixed. Actually, nothing can be fixed. As I left the store I imagined he’d run after me saying “Come back, boy, come back,” but of course not, and when I think about it today it’s entirely logical that he had only scorn and no pity for a lost kid who had chosen the cudgel and Sheikh Nureddin. I walked quickly to the Group’s premises, my guilt was changing into aggression, I was mentally insulting the poor guy, what came over me, good Lord, to go back there, and two small tears of rage emerged from the corner of my eyes, there was smoke in the night, a thick, whitish smoke mixed with ashes scattered by the wind; a vapor of anger was weighing down the springtime, a burnt smell was invading my throat and it was only when I reached the corner of the street, seeing the crowd and the fire trucks, that I realized that the Group for the Propagation of Koranic Thought was burning; tall flames leapt from the windows and licked the upper floor of the building; from outside, with their hoses, firemen sprayed water on the openings, mouths with tongues of fire that spat tons of half-consumed paper debris, while a squad of policemen were trying their best to keep the crowd away from the catastrophe. Hundreds of books were going up in the breeze, invading the air as far as Larache or Tarifa; I pictured the blister packs melting, the heat attacking the compact pages of stacked books that ended up catching and transmitting the destruction to their neighbors, I knew my stock well, near that window was the supply of Heroines, Sexuality, and all the little manuals, over there were the cubic yards of commentaries on the Koran, and right in the middle, on the synthetic rugs that must have been liquefied, my boxes, the Série Noire were flying away too, the Manchettes, the Pronzinis, the McBains, the Izzos and all my nice shirts, my fabulous shoes, my patent leather; the polish must have been burning, the hair gel would fuel all of it and soon, if the firemen didn’t manage to get the fire under control, it would be the gas canister in the kitchen and the one in the bathroom that would explode, sending into the air once and for all what remained of Sheikh Nureddin’s institution.