Mathias Énard - Street of Thieves

Fortunately I was alone, that night in Tangier; I wouldn’t have liked Bassam laughing at seeing me flee from the alcove with the green sofa after exactly two minutes. Men are dogs who rub against each other in solitude, only the hope of Judit gleamed in my misery even if, shy as I was, assailed by memories of Meryem, I would no doubt tremble before kissing her, shiver before going to bed with her, if the occasion presented itself, and the closer this mirage got — just a few hours separated me from her return to Tangier, as I stood in the early morning on my balcony — the more terrified I became. The events of the last few days whirled in my head, the debris of nightmares reddened the dawn mist over the Strait.

The fire at the Group worried me, I wondered how long I had left before the cops arrested me.

I felt a little like a fugitive.

Despite my new job, the money I had as advance, I was at a loss, anxious, just as powerless as when I’d been faced with Zahra the night before; the suit of age was too big for me. I missed a mother, a father, a Sheikh Nureddin, a Bassam.

Judit’s arrival was a real disaster.

Maybe I shouldn’t have waited for her at the train station as a surprise; I shouldn’t have made her dizzy with talk, I shouldn’t have acted as if we had an intimate, close relationship which didn’t exist — I went too fast; I had formed my plans alone and quickly, à la Bassam, without caring about what she might have experienced in Marrakesh, a story that didn’t exist. Judit saw me as I was, a young stranger who was holding her too tight. Maybe she was scared. She told me it was horrible, the way it felt, after the attack, the square that had been so bustling where everyone acted as if nothing had happened without believing it, where all of a sudden the huge machinery for enchanting tourists had ground to a stop.

She said actually, you know, in Marrakesh I saw your friend, Bassam, the one who was with us the other night.

As she said that she looked me in the eyes. I wasn’t sure if she really had an intuition about what that meant. It was unimaginable, in any case. Unimaginable to think that she could have come across, a few hours later, one of the people who had made the bomb explode in that café. Despite all the clues I had had, I couldn’t bring myself to realize it. That this attack actually existed, beyond the images on TV, was unthinkable. That Bassam could have participated in it without talking about it to me was, essentially, almost impossible.

Judit didn’t say it’s strange he was in Marrakesh, when we had seen him the day before without him mentioning his trip.

I walked her back to her hotel. Judit was distant, she barely opened her mouth the whole way, I tried to fill in the silence by speaking the whole time, which was probably not a good idea. My chatter seemed to force her even further into a disturbed silence.

Sometimes we sense the situation is escaping us, that things are getting out of hand; we become afraid and instead of calmly looking, trying to understand, we react like a dog caught in barbed wire, thrashing about madly until it slices open its throat.

My anger was a panic, it had no other object than to conquer Judit’s coldness. I used her gift as a target, the book by Choukri of which I’d read five pages.

“It’s a disgrace,” I said, “how a Moroccan Muslim could write such things, it’s an insult.”

Judit said nothing, we were arriving at the Grand Zoco just before the gate to the old city. She just looked at me civilly; to me it felt like a slap.

I sank into an idiotic diatribe on this novel that I hadn’t read and its author, a poor specimen, an illiterate beggar, a degenerate, I said, and the more absurdities I emitted, the more I felt as if I were drowning, floundering in a sea of stupidity while Judit, still so beautiful, was walking on water. I was sweating as I dragged the wheeled suitcase, in the end she didn’t have a backpack but a bitch of a wheeled suitcase and as a good escort I had insisted on pulling it myself. I was out of breath, I couldn’t continue my speech, which was becoming sporadic, there were too many thoughts in my head: the agitated swirling of my confused movements was pushing away my life raft. I sensed she had just one desire, to reach her hotel and get rid of me, to forget the long train trip, to forget Marrakesh, to forget me and catch her flight, and deep inside, in my innermost depths, I knew she was right. I wanted to seem literary and interesting, I continued my speech, holding forth as only a good male chauvinist can, I said, you should read Mutanabbi or Jahiz instead, that’s real Arabic literature, Choukri isn’t for girls. I had just shot a bullet — not in my foot, but smack in my head. This time Judit’s look contained complete scorn. She said, yes yes, perfunctorily, and if I’d been the least bit courageous I’d have chucked the suitcase, stopped, let out a long string of curses and said sorry, let’s stop everything, let’s rewind, let’s act as if I hadn’t said anything since the start, as if I weren’t obsessed with you, as if nothing had happened these last two days, as if nothing had exploded in Marrakesh, as if the fires weren’t reaching us.

“My house burned down yesterday,” I said all of a sudden.

She turned her face to me without pausing.

“Oh really?”

And I didn’t know what to say; I could have added “yesterday I also went to the whorehouse without managing to fuck”; my eyes were burning, from sweat no doubt. I was a lost child who was asking for help from an unknown foreigner.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, everything burned. I took a room at an inn.”

Her eyes told me she had trouble believing me; suddenly I saw the unlikelihood of my situation, no more family, no more friends, no more house, alone in Tangier, the drifting city.

“It’s a long story.”

“No doubt.”

She looked straight ahead; it seemed to me she was quickening her pace.

Of course all this had begun with original sin, undressing Meryem, but it seemed to me it had become an international conspiracy, an enormity, an aberration, like the monstrous offspring of couples too closely related.

“We’re here.”

There was relief in these words uttered in unison; Judit’s hand was clutching the suitcase I was holding the other end of, as if she were afraid I’d leave with it.

“Thank you for coming to get me at the station, it was nice of you.”

She seemed sincere. Sincere and exhausted.

“It’s nothing, it’s normal.”

“ Ilâ-l-liqâ, then. Till the next time.”

I said goodbye in turn, I didn’t hold out my hand, or my cheek, or anything, and I left.

I must have been completely exhausted myself, washed up, psychologically destroyed, since I began to cry. It started in the street; the burning in my eyes got stronger; I felt a wetness on my cheeks, just like when you’re little and you’re bleeding from your nose and you suddenly discover your hand is red with blood. This wasn’t blood. This was water, tears streaming down, and my vain attempts to wipe them away with my shirtsleeve were useless, they kept coming, more than before, I was so ashamed to be bawling like that in the street, I ran up the stairs of my hotel four at a time, slammed the door behind me, locked it, splashed water on my face, nothing helped, I was still sobbing like a kid; I collapsed on the bed, buried my face in the pillow to stifle these sobs, and let myself give in to sorrow. I must have dozed off. An hour or two later I had the mug of a boxer after an unequal fight — swollen eyelids, red eyes — but I felt better. A shower and nothing would show.

The opened envelope lay on the floor next to my bed; the old note from Bassam, which his mother had slipped me probably by mistake, was written on a piece of lined notebook paper; it began with folded inside was Meryem’s letter for me, which he had kept all this time. I realized why he hadn’t given it to me; he must have thought about destroying it, so I wouldn’t find out, so I’d never know till the end of time what my heart had guessed, that she no longer existed, I couldn’t even manage to say that she was dead, there, I had the truth in front of my eyes, there was nothing else, I had broken the Universe, the wrath of God was upon me, his rage, his powerful, blind, but just rage was destroying everything around me, I felt infinitesimal in my hotel room, lost in the heart of the world, I began crying again, on the balcony watching those idiotic boats crossing the Strait.