Mathias Énard: Street of Thieves

I napped a little, dreaming about the above-mentioned young women. Then I reread the beginning of Total Chaos, one of my favorite thrillers; I imagined that Tangier suddenly became Marseille, which wasn’t very likely, as I snacked on a bag of chips; night fell gently; the smell of the sea was all around me.

I lay on the floor without a light until it was dark out.

BASSAMrushed in and almost trampled me.

“What are you doing in the dark? Were you sleeping?”

“Not really,” I said.

He was overexcited, as usual. He kept pacing in circles like a puppy around its mother’s basket.

“What’s happened to you now?” I asked. “One more guy to beat up?”

“No, this time it’s bigger than that.”

“Is it the Prophet’s sword?”

“Stop your blasphemies, you degenerate. It’s time for revenge.”

I thought for a minute that he was joking, but after I turned on the light I could see that his weaselly eyes shone with a strange madness, in the center of his thick peasant’s head.

“What kind of shit are you talking about?”

He fed me some vague paranoid theory according to which only an attack that would shock people’s sensibilities would get things underway by precipitating the West, the population, and the Palace into confrontation. It was all Sheikh Nureddin, with hardly any Bassam. He had a tiny pea in place of a brain.

“You have a pea instead of a brain,” I said.

What’s more, I knew very well that, in truth, he couldn’t care less about political Islam. After all, we had fallen into religion when we were little, we’d had enough of it.

“Drop these stories about an attack, come on, we’ll go out. The Sheikh won’t come back before tomorrow.”

I saw Bassam stare at me as if I were the one who was completely crazy.

“I have to pray to purify myself.”

I sighed. I wondered what Sheikh Nureddin had done to him, or what he had promised him. Houris in Paradise, maybe. Bassam had a weakness for stories about houris, who were always virgins you could fuck for eternity on the shores of Kawthar, the Lake of Abundance in the hereafter.

But I too had my houris.

“You know what, I met two great girls last night, two Spanish students. They’re staying till tomorrow. We smoked a joint together, and I’m supposed to meet up with them soon.”

“Stop joking around.”

But his eyes had lit up.

That made a big impression, in his head.

“I don’t believe you.”

“That doesn’t matter. I need you to come with me, to take care of the second one. I won’t lie to you, she’s not as pretty as the first, but she’s still nice. Come on, do this for me.”

“So, what’re their names?”

That was it, I had him hooked.

“Yours is Inez and mine is Carmen.”

I could have thought of something more original, but that had come out point-blank, without a second’s hesitation.

“And how old are they?”

“I don’t know, twenty-four, twenty-five,” I said.

“Oh man, it sucks, but I promised the Sheikh I’d stay here and wait for his orders. And spend the night praying.”

“We can stay for a little bit with them, and then you can come back and pray, what’s the difference?”

I thought: if all of Sheikh Nureddin’s recruits were as easy to manipulate as Bassam, the victory of Islam won’t happen very soon.

He suddenly took on the relieved look of someone who’d made a difficult decision.

“Okay, but just for a little bit, alright? Afterward I’ll come back.”

“Whatever you want.”

Now I’m committed, I thought. I’ll be mincemeat when he finds out that the fat Inez and the beautiful Carmen stood us up.

No matter, I’ll improvise.

And it will still be something that Sheikh Nureddin won’t have, those few hours of prayer. A tiny victory.

Bassam combed some of my hair gel into his hair, breathed into his hand to check his breath; he was trembling with eagerness.

“Let’s speak Spanish on the way, to practice a little,” he said.

“ Con mucho gusto, hijo de puta ,” I replied.

And we were off; a warm light rain was beginning to fall.

THEshower didn’t last, but the weather could provide me with an excuse for the absence of our imaginary friends; everyone knows that Spaniards never go out when it rains. We walked for half an hour to reach the center of town. Bassam kept bombarding me with questions in an Iberian mixed with French and Arabic, pretty incomprehensible but delightful; he wanted to know everything, precisely where I had met these young women, what we had said to each other, where they came from, etc. I improvised these details, hoping to remember them so I wouldn’t betray myself later on — Valencia (Madrid or Seville seemed too obvious to me), students, on vacation between semesters, and so on. I wondered if Bassam was really tricked or if the game let him dream, like me. I talked about it so much I was almost disappointed myself not to find them at the meeting place, supposedly in a tearoom near the Place des Nations. I bought a cake for Bassam, who devoured it in a few minutes, nervousness no doubt. We looked sort of foolish, us two, in this pastry shop; all around guys were on dates with their fiancées, they all wore pretty, colorful veils, and were stuffing themselves with lemon tarts or rosewater milkshakes while their men, mustachioed, no doubt dreamed of groping their breasts, thinking it was a pretty good deal, a few sweets in return for a session of heavy petting afterward in the nice warmth of a car or on a sofa. I think I was a little jealous of these fellows just slightly older than us, they had acquired the right to slip their hands into the panties of their cousins in exchange for an official engagement and a little cash for rings and necklaces. As for us, we were waiting for our phantom Spanish girls, looking like out-of-town yokels slathered in hair gel.

Bassam was fidgeting next to the crumbs of his black forest cake, whose candied cherry sat prominently, abandoned, in the middle of the plate.

I pretended to get impatient too, what the hell are they up to, what the hell are they doing, five more minutes and I’ll tell Bassam we should go drown our sorrows in beer somewhere — it was raining again.

It’s well known, Spanish girls don’t go out in the rain.

Suddenly I saw Bassam leap out of his chair; he craned his neck like a giraffe and gave me a few kicks under the table. I turned around; two young European girls had just come in; brunettes, with long hair worn down, bangs over their eyes, they wore harem pants, dozens of bracelets on their forearms, leather handbags and clogs made from the same material: Spaniards without a doubt, incredible. Actually no, it wasn’t all that incredible, but it placed me in a delicate position.

“No, it’s not them,” I said to Bassam.

He looked at me disconcertedly, sighing.

The two girls must have entered the bakery for shelter from the rain.

Bassam was irritated, he began wondering if I hadn’t been taking him for a ride; the fact that two Spanish girls came in as we were waiting for two other ones gave him the feeling that something wasn’t right. Young Iberians strolling in pairs in Tangier in this season weren’t as common as all that.

An idea came into his head:

“Go ask them if they maybe know Inez and Carmen.”

I almost replied Who? but remembered the names of my two ghosts just in time.

“Maybe they’re in the same group.”

He wore a challenging look on his face, a dangerous look; he was trying, above all, to test me, to find out whether or not I had lied to him.

I sighed; I could tell him I was too chicken, he wouldn’t have understood. I saw him again the way he was the day before, cudgel in hand, beating the bookseller; I wondered what the hell I was doing there, in a tearoom with my pal the madman with the pickaxe.