Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

‘And now, read to me a little, Gino … No, not the Bible,’ she said, clasping the holy book tighter to her chest. ‘I prefer Edmond Bourg. Reread Chapter thirteen to me, the passage where he talks about his wife …’

Madame Ramoun closed her eyes and let her son’s penetrating voice lull her. Gino read Chapter thirteen to her. As his mother didn’t react, he went on to the next chapter. Madame Ramoun shifted in her sleep and moved her finger, begging her son to go back and reread, over and over, the same chapter that the author devotes to his wife. It was a moving passage in which Edmond Bourg asked his wife for forgiveness.

Madame Ramoun died a few hours later, the Bible over her heart and her eyes filled with a serene light. First, she heaved a sigh, opened her eyes to take one last look at her son and smiled at him, then, happy, freed from the chains of her body, as light as the first thrill of her romance, she turned to the photograph propped up on the chair and said, ‘You took your time coming for me, my love.’

Gino and I looked for a carpenter to make us a coffin; those offered by the undertakers were no match for the dead woman’s size. It was hot and we had to be quick about it to avoid the corpse decomposing.

Gino’s worst fears were realised. More than the mourning itself, it was the removal of the body that was a particularly gruelling ordeal for my friend. It was impossible to get the corpse out through the main door. She was too obese, and too heavy for the bearers.

Volunteers from the neighbourhood came to help. There was such a crowd that the tram couldn’t get through. What’s going on? the passengers asked, leaning over the guardrail. Apparently a woman died … Did the building collapse on her? No, they’re knocking down the wall to get her out … Are you joking? Everyone stared at the men making a big hole in the wall around the window of the dead woman’s room.

Gino was devastated at the spectacle afforded by his mother’s funeral. He always preferred to be discreet and now he was on display to all and sundry like some kind of circus freak.

After knocking down the front of the house, the volunteers started erecting scaffolding with the help of ropes, pulleys and beams. A stonemason with a stitched forehead cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted instructions. The coffin, as big as a Norman dresser, was tied firmly and, to cries of Now hoist! some dozen men starting pulling on the ropes while others, on the balcony, guided the load to avoid it crashing into the wall.

The chaos that day was unbelievable.

When the coffin emerged through the hole in the wall and swayed over everyone’s heads, the crowd held their breath. In the general silence, the only sound was the creaking of the pulleys. The coffin was lowered with extreme caution and laid on a cart. The funeral cortège set off immediately, drawing dozens of onlookers in its wake.

In the streets, people stopped as the hearse went by; some took off their hats, others, sitting at café tables, rose obsequiously to their feet. Boys emerged from the thickets and trees where they were playing hide and seek, stopped their games of pignols or put off till later the errands they had been given and came to swell the cortège, suddenly silent and solemn, while housewives jostled one another on the balconies and rooftops, their children clinging to their skirts. An old madman who looked like Rasputin came and placed himself at the front of the cortège, foaming at the mouth, eyes popping out of their sockets. He pointed at the hearse, then at the sky, and shook his unruly hair from side to side, crying, ‘This is a warning. We’ll all die one day. What we think we possess is only an illusion. We’re merely the fleeting links in a chain dragged by a ghost named Time heading straight for nothingness.’ He was in a trance. Policemen had to step in and get him out of the way.

Gino kept his head down.

I took his hand; he pulled it away quickly and hurried on, wanting to be alone.

We buried Madame Ramoun in the Christian cemetery.

It was a terribly sad day.

Misfortunes never come singly. When one rears its head, a whole tribe appears in its wake, and the descent into hell begins in earnest.

It was a religious holiday and I was just getting ready to go with Gino to the beach at Kristel, where my friend had got into the habit of taking refuge since his mother’s death, when a gleaming car, driven by an Arab driver, stopped outside our house in Rue du Général-Cérez. In no time at all, kids appeared from the nearby alleys and started swarming around that gem on four wheels, fascinated by so much technology and refinement.

Who was that fat lady who looked like a sultana, being helped out of the car by two servants? Who were those women glittering with jewels and silk, and where were they taking those trays loaded with gifts and beribboned cakes? What was the meaning of those loud ululations, the excitement that had gripped our courtyard?

Nobody had told me, and I hadn’t seen it coming.

It was like a guillotine blade falling without any warning.

Nora’s a wonderful girl, my mother would tell me. She deserves all the happiness in the world, and you don’t have much to give her, my son. You have to face facts. Nora will be pampered. She’ll live in a big house and eat her fill every day. Don’t be selfish. Leave her to her destiny, and try to find one for yourself …

My cousin Nora, the love I had thought was mine for sure, my reason for living, had been handed over to a rich landowner from Frenda.

How had a country bumpkin who lived hundreds of miles from Oran heard about her? Nora almost never left the house, never saw anybody.

‘The matchmakers!’ the Mozabite enlightened me. ‘They’re professionals who frequent the hammam. And there’s no more propitious place to evaluate the merchandise than a hammam. The matchmakers know their business. They come and take a bath, settle in the hot room and choose from among the naked virgins those who have high breasts, shapely thighs, full hips, nice round buttocks, slender necks and pretty faces. After setting their sights on the one they prefer, they follow her from a distance, find out where she lives and gather as much information about her as they can from the neighbours. Once they’re sure they’ve got their hands on the right girl, they inform the family that hired them and, within a week, ladies loaded with gifts appear as if out of the blue to make their offer to the beauty’s parents … It’s an old practice. How else can you explain, when a virgin has been confined within four walls, that someone always comes to ask for her hand? The matchmakers are the best detectives in the country, and probably the best paid. They’d track down the Queen of Sheba without any problem.’

I was devastated.

I didn’t go to Kristel that day.

No sea would have been big enough to drown my sorrows in.

No sooner requested than wrapped and delivered. Within three weeks, everything was arranged and the marriage procession was begun. I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself. My blue-bird had gone to her cage and her chirping was drowned out by the noises of the city.

In Oran, winter arrives like a thief and leaves the same way. What does it take with it in its shameful retreat? Everything the inhabitants hate — greyness, cold, short days, bad moods — in other words, what they gladly give up to it.

That winter was the worst of all winters; it had stolen the sun from me. When spring returned with its lights and its joys, it merely made my nights all the colder and sadder. With Nora gone, my people and my streets were unfamiliar to me. I had been betrayed. My aunt was not unaware of the feelings I had for her daughter. How could she have trampled on them? And why hadn’t my mother tried to dissuade her? I hated the whole earth, the angels and the demons, and every star in the sky. I had the feeling I had lost sight of the one point of reference that mattered to me. Suddenly, I didn’t know where I was. Deprived of my certainties and a little of my soul, I began cursing everything in my path.