Mathias Énard - Street of Thieves

“We’ve earned a drink, haven’t we, Lakhdar?”

He sat down as usual behind his screen, shook the mouse, entered his password; I remained standing.

“Sit down, sit down, we’ll have a drink and talk a little.”

I searched for an excuse to escape, but couldn’t find any; I was too exhausted from taking care of the corpse to think — I ended up worn out every time.

I sat on the sofa. I looked at the bottle he had placed on his desk; it was a half-liter glass flask, the label was facing him. Mr. Cruz needed a stiff one; his long face was pale, his eyes red-rimmed. He put on a video, out of force of habit — he stared at the screen for a second before stopping the procession of images of death that I couldn’t see.

“So, Lakhdar, a little whiskey?”

Suddenly he was extraordinarily nervous, he went to the kitchen, returned with two glasses and some ice in a metal bucket.

I didn’t want to annoy him, so I agreed. It might do me good, too.

He immediately seized a bottle of Cutty on the shelf, opened it, poured whiskey into two glasses, threw two ice cubes into each, and downed his in one gulp, even before I could pick mine up. He breathed out an ahhh of relief, poured himself another, handed me my glass before collapsing into his armchair, looking relaxed.

I emptied half the liquid in one gulp as well. I had never drunk whiskey. For me it was a legendary drink you had to taste in a bar in London, or Paris, with a girl at your side. Taste of crushed bedbugs, burning sensation in the esophagus. Hard to understand the interest of my authors in this beverage. Especially in a situation like this.

Cruz was watching me, as usual, on the verge of speech; he always seemed on the point of saying something that never came out, an eternal stammer. He began a phrase with my first name, said, Lakhdar? I answered yes Mr. Cruz, and then nothing, he stared at me in silence.

I prayed to get out of this place as soon as possible. Too bad about the money, too bad about everything; I was going to get my passport back and leave. Go back to Morocco, find Tangier again, forget Algeciras, forget the dead, forget Judit and Barcelona.

I was just about to say to Cruz that I wanted to go home. It was the right moment, he looked a little placated by the alcohol; he hesitated again, articulated Lakhdar? without saying anything else. He seized the little flask, poured himself a large swig, and added a hefty dose of whiskey until the glass was three-quarters full. Then he stared at the mixture; he swirled around the ice that hadn’t melted yet.

I got up, I couldn’t sit still anymore. I said Mr. Cruz. . He looked at me with such a look of pain, such suffering marked his fat face, all of a sudden, that I muttered that I had to go feed the dogs.

He passed his hands over his face, as if to wipe away some absent sweat.

“Lakhdar?”

“Yes, Mr. Cruz?”

“Come back soon, I’ll wait for you.”

And he downed his cocktail all at once, with an air of relief.

He had one of his silences, as if he were hesitating about adding something, and then he whispered:

“You’re in luck, you’ll see.”

The phrase was cryptic; I imagined, as I played a little with the huskies before getting out their food bowl, that Cruz had realized I wanted to leave, that he wanted to wish me luck for the future.

When I went back to the office after feeding the dogs, he wasn’t there; I heard a noise in the bathroom, of vomiting; he came out staggering.

“Are you okay, Mr. Cruz?”

He swallowed with difficulty, his mouth twisted, his face so tense that his eyes were rolling around like marbles.

“It’s starting, Lakhdar.”

He’s dead drunk, I said to myself.

He sat down on the sofa facing the desk; he seemed to be having trouble breathing; he crossed his arms over his stomach, looked as if he were in great pain.

“It won’t last very long. . Watch closely. .”

His lips were drawn out, he was grating his teeth; his face reddened, his shoulders were overcome with tremors, he lifted his knees to his stomach to relieve the pain.

“Mr. Cruz? Are you sick?”

He looked as if he wanted to answer, but no sound managed to form in his throat; he lifted his chin toward me, his hands were nervously patting each other. A dew of sweat covered his forehead, a drop of blood trickled from his nose, his lips turned purple, his head began to shake from right to left, leaning forward, as if to chase away the suffering, as if he couldn’t believe what was happening to him — but the movement transformed into a terrifying contraction of the tendons in his neck, to the side first, then backward; his Adam’s apple rose and fell, vibrated along his taut throat, like a big insect.

He was suddenly seized by a huge spasm that threw him onto the floor, his arm flung out, his legs arced as if he wanted to jump, he began shouting, I went over to him:

“Mr. Cruz, can you hear me?”

He still couldn’t manage to answer and I was overcome with terror — he couldn’t swallow, his neck was stiff, his chest lifted up, his back arched, his eyes looked as if they were about to explode. His body was a steel cable tensed with suffering, he was trying to speak, trying to grab my arm, but his wide-open hands twisted outward, the fingers stiffly spread apart — it lasted about twenty seconds, maybe a little more, and he went limp; he went limp, sighing, groaning, breathing very loudly, I shouted Mr. Cruz, what is the number for emergencies? The number for an ambulance? He didn’t answer, I rushed to the telephone, feverishly tried dialing 1–5, as in Morocco, nothing happened; I looked quickly at his desk to see if there was a phone book, but no.

Cruz was suddenly overcome by a second convulsion, even more violent than the first, if that was possible; his eyelids drew almost completely back into the sockets, disappeared behind the eyeballs, it was horrible to see, his face was blue, his feet managed to fold the thick plastic of his soles like cardboard, he rose up, moved by the absolute tension of all the muscles, in a sharp cry that seemed to come from the depths of his thoracic cage — tears started to well up in my eyes, Señor Cruz, Señor Cruz, I didn’t know what to do, I thought I should go find a neighbor, ran outside, ready to run the two hundred meters that separated us from the nearest house, or to stop a car passing by on the highway; once in the yard I remembered that bitch of a fence was always locked, instead of going all out and climbing it I chose to turn back and take the key from Cruz’s pocket, to be able to open it for the ambulance.

Cruz was resting on his left side, his body formed a horrible half-circle, his back curved like a bow without a string, pelvis forward, feet extraordinarily convex; he was a monstrous ballet dancer, whose round neck and wide-open mouth completed the atrocious pose. Even the tips of his fingers took part in this fixed contraction, whose energy could no longer be discerned. He was dead. I approached him, nothing came to my mind, not even a prayer.

Cruz had joined the drowned of the Strait.

The only movement on this mass of flesh was the second hand of his watch, which showed 6:43.

Iremained stunned for a few minutes, kneeling before the inert body, before I gathered my wits, of course I didn’t understand, it took me years to try to understand the leprosy that was eating away at Cruz in his solitude; he had sprinkled me with his death, he had offered me his agony, an atrocious gift — I realized that he had poisoned himself right in front of my eyes; I went to splash water on my face, thousands, millions of contradictory thoughts were spinning in my head, now what, I saw the little bottle on the desk, the label bore a white skull on a red background. I paced in circles for a while, come on, now you have to act; I recovered Cruz’s key ring. I conscientiously searched through the desk drawers, but didn’t find anything important aside from my passport; I opened the little safe with the help of a key shaped like a cross, it contained a number of papers that had nothing to do with me, and almost five thousand euros in cash. I was becoming a thief. I had enough to live on for a while in Barcelona or elsewhere. The money of the dead, that’s the kind of idiotic thing I said to myself.