Yasmina Khadra - What the day owes the nigth

I close my eyes to put an end to something, to put a stop to this story I have summoned a thousand times, and a thousand times revised. Eyelids are like secret doors; closed they tell us stories, open they look out on to ourselves. We are prisoners of our memories. Our eyes no longer belong to us . . . I look for Émilie in these endless reels of film but cannot find her. It is too late to go back to the cemetery and reclaim the dust of the rose petals; too late to go back to number 143 Rue des Frères-Julien, to become the sensible people who always make up in the end. I struggle through the crowds flooding the port of Oran in the summer of 1962; I see the terrified families on the quays sitting on what little luggage they managed to salvage, the children exhausted, sleeping on the ground, the steamships readying themselves to take the dispossessed into exile. I pan around, now a face, now a cry, an embrace, a fluttering handkerchief. I can see no sign of Émilie . . . And where am I in all this? I am simply a disembodied gaze moving over the crowd, moving between the blankness of absence and the nakedness of silence . . .

What am I to do with the night?

Who can I confide in?

In truth, I do not want to do anything with this night; I do not want to confide in anyone. One truth compensates for every other: all things come to an end, even grief is not eternal.

I take my courage in both hands, open the metal box and then the letter. It is dated one week before Émilie died. I take a deep breath and I read:

Dear Younes,

I waited for you the day after our meeting in Marseille. Waited in the same spot. I waited for you the next day and all the days that followed, but you never came back. Fate –mektoub, as we say in our country. A tiny detail can change everything, for better or for worse. We learn to accept it. In time we become calmer, wiser. I regret all the terrible things I said to you. Perhaps that is why I never dared open your letters. There are silences that should not be broken. Like still waters, they restore our soul.

Forgive me as I have forgiven you.

Here, where I am now, with Simon and all those I loved and lost, I will always think of you.

Émilie.

Suddenly, it is as though all the stars in the heavens meld into a single star, as though the night, the whole of the night, has come into my hotel room to watch over me. Now I know that wherever I go, I will sleep peacefully.

Marignane airport is quiet, there are no crowds, and the queues for check-in gradually peter out. The Air Algérie wing of the terminal is almost deserted. A couple of men with vast suitcases – trabendistesto the initiated, indefatigable traffickers in contraband, the natural result of chronic shortages and survival instinct – use every trick in the book to negotiate their excess baggage, but the person at the check-in desk is unimpressed. Behind them a couple of pensioners with overloaded baggage trolleys patiently wait their turn.

‘Any luggage, sir?’ the girl behind the counter asks me.

‘Just this bag.’

‘You want to take it as cabin baggage?’

‘It would save me having to hang around when I arrive.’

‘That’s very true,’ she says, handing back my passport. ‘This is your boarding pass; boarding is at nine fifteen through gate fourteen.’

My watch reads 8.22 a.m. I ask Gustave and Michel if they would like to join me for a cup of coffee. We find a table. Gustave tries to think of an interesting subject for conversation, without success. We drink our coffee in silence, staring into the middle distance. I think about Jean-Christophe Lamy. Yesterday I was on the point of asking Fabrice why our elder and better had not come, but my tongue shrivelled in my mouth and I said nothing. I found out from André that Jean-Christophe had attended Émilie’s funeral, that Isabelle, who had come with him, was in fine form and that he had told both of them that I was coming to Aix . . . I’m sad about him.

There is a boarding call for flight AH 1069 to Oran, my flight. Gustave gives me a hug. Michel kisses me on both cheeks and says something I do not quite catch. I thank him for his hospitality and then take my leave of them.

I do not go to the boarding gate.

I order another coffee.

I wait.

My intuition tells me something is going to happen, that I have to be patient and stay here in my seat.

Last call for passengers on flight AH 1069 to Oran. A woman’s voice comes over the loudspeakers. Final boarding call for passengers travelling on flight AH 1069.

My coffee cup is empty, my mind is empty. I am floating in empty space. The minutes tramp across my shoulders like elephants. My back hurts, my knees hurt, my stomach hurts. The voice from the loudspeaker is drilling into my brain. Now I am personally being summoned to gate 14. Would Monsieur Mahieddine Younes please come to gate 14, the flight is now closing . . .

My intuition is none too good in its old age, I say to myself. Time to go; there’s no point waiting any longer. Get a move on or you’ll miss your flight, and you’ve got a grandson to marry three days from now . . .

I pick up my bag and head towards the boarding gate. Hardly have I reached it when I hear a voice call me from the depths of I don’t know what:

‘Jonas!’

It’s Jean-Christophe.

There he is, standing behind the yellow line, wrapped up in a thick coat, his hair snow-white, his shoulders bowed, as old as the world.

‘I was starting to give up hope,’ I said, coming back towards him.

‘God knows, I tried to stay away.’

‘It’s good to see you’re still the same stubborn bastard. But don’t you think at our age we’re past all this foolish pride? We’re already living on borrowed time. There aren’t many pleasures left in our twilight years, and there is no greater pleasure than seeing the face of a friend you lost forty-five years ago.’

We throw our arms around each other, drawn by a powerful magnet, like two rivers coursing from opposite extremes bearing all the emotions in the world, which, having rushed past hill and valley, come together suddenly to form a single raging torrent of spume and eddies. I can hear our two old bodies collide, the dry rustle of our suits impossible to distinguish from the dry rustle of our skin. Time marks a pause. There is no one in the world but us. We hug each other hard as once we used to hug our dreams to us, convinced that if we were to relax our grip, even a fraction, they would slip away. We hold each other up with these ancient bodies worn to the marrow in a storm of creaks and groans. We are no more than two frayed nerves, two exposed wires that might short-circuit at any moment, two ancient children sobbing uncontrollably as strangers stand and watch.

Would Monsieur Mahieddine Younes please come immediately to gate 14, your flight is closing . . .The woman’s voice roars over the loudspeakers.

‘Where have you been?’ I ask, holding him at arm’s length so I can look at him.

‘I’m here now, that’s all that matters.’

‘It is.’

We hug each other again.

‘I’m so happy.’

‘So am I, Jonas.’

‘Were you around yesterday and the day before?’

‘No, I was in Nice. Fabrice phoned and called me every name under the sun, then Dédé called. I told them I wasn’t coming. Then, this morning, Isabelle practically kicked me out at five o’clock in the morning. I drove like a maniac. At my age.’

‘How is Isabelle?’

‘Exactly the same as when you knew her. Indestructible and impossible . . . What about you?’

‘I can’t complain.’

‘You look good . . . Have you seen Dédé? You know he’s really ill. He only made the trip for your sake. How was the reunion?’

‘We laughed until we cried, and then we just cried . . .’