Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

De Stefano tried to talk me round. I changed seats every time he came and sat down next to me. Tiring of it, he went and sat at the back of the bus. I felt his eyes on the back of my neck all the way to Oran.

‘I told you I’m sorry, damn it!’ he exploded when we got off the bus. ‘You want me to go down on my knees or what? I swear I didn’t know. I genuinely thought the boxer was a local champion. The organisers assured me he was.’

‘Boxing isn’t a church service,’ Francis the pianist said, anxious to see De Stefano take out the envelope the official had slipped into his pocket. ‘The paths of glory are paved with trapdoors and banana skins. When money’s involved, the devil is never very far away. There are sponsored fights, fixed fights, fights lost in advance, and when you’re an Arab, the only way to deal with biased referees is to drop your opponent so that he doesn’t get up again.’

‘This is between me and my champion,’ De Stefano cut in. ‘We don’t need an interpreter.’

‘Understood,’ Francis said, looking significantly at De Stefano’s pocket.

De Stefano took out the envelope, extracted a wad of banknotes, counted it and gave each person his share. Tobias and Salvo took theirs and left, pleased that they hadn’t come back empty-handed in spite of my ‘defeat’. Francis remained where he was, not happy with his cut.

‘What do you want, my photograph?’ De Stefano said.

Francis immediately beat a retreat.

‘His eyes are bigger than his belly, that Francis,’ De Stefano grunted. ‘I’ve divided it equally, but because he knows how to sort out the paperwork and do the typing, he thinks he deserves more than the rest of us.’

‘I don’t want your money, De Stefano. You can give it to Francis.’

‘Why? It’s fifty francs, damn it. Some people would sell their mother-in-law for less than that.’

‘Not me. I don’t want money that’s haram.’

‘What do you mean, haram? You didn’t steal it.’

‘I didn’t earn it either. I’m a boxer, not a comedian.’

I left him standing there in the middle of the street and ran to join Gino on Boulevard Mascara.

*

Gino wasn’t in a good mood. He didn’t look up when he heard me come in. He was sitting barefoot at the table in the kitchen in his vest, dipping a piece of bread into an omelette he had just taken off the stove. Since the death of his mother, he had been unusually moody and no longer turned a deaf ear when he was provoked. His language had grown harsher, and so had his look. At times, I had the feeling I was disturbing him, that he didn’t want me in his home. Whenever I slammed the door to go back to my mother’s, he wouldn’t try to run after me. The next day, he would waylay me on my way out of the gym. He wouldn’t apologise for his behaviour the day before and would act as if nothing had happened.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me how it went in Aïn Témouchent?’

Gino shrugged.

‘The only things missing were Buster Keaton and a pianist in the hall.’

‘I don’t care,’ he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

‘Are you angry with me?’

He pounded furiously on the table. ‘How dare you let that imbecile treat me that way? I’m not a dog. You should have shut his mouth and demanded that I go with you.’

‘He’s the boss, Gino. What could I do? You saw I wasn’t pleased.’

‘I didn’t see anything of the sort. That shit stood in my way and you just stared at your feet. You should have insisted he let me go with you to Aïn Témouchent.’

‘I didn’t know how these things work. It was the first time I’ve had a fight. I thought De Stefano was within his rights.’

Gino was about to protest, but changed his mind and pushed away his plate.

I was sufficiently angry not to put up with Gino’s complaints. I turned on my heel and ran down the stairs. I needed to clean myself at the hammam and put my thoughts in order. I spent that night at my mother’s.

I skipped training for three days running.

De Stefano gave Tobias the job of reasoning with me, but Tobias didn’t really need to do much; on the contrary, I was glad of the opportunity not to lose face, because I was starting to find the days long and monotonous. I went to the gym and got back in the ring like a dunce approaching the blackboard, not really applying myself, out of revenge for the dirty trick played on me in Aïn Témouchent. De Stefano realised how much his casual attitude had hurt me. He didn’t like the fact that I was behaving like an idiot but, not wanting to complicate things, he kept quiet about his feelings. To redeem himself, he did a lot of negotiating and managed to find me a serious opponent, a guy from Saint-Cloud who was starting to make a name for himself. The fight took place in a little town, in the middle of a stony field. It was such a hot day that there wasn’t much of a crowd, but my opponent had brought most of his home village with him. His name was Gomez and he knocked me out in the third round. When the referee finished the count, De Stefano threw his straw boater on the ground and stamped on it. It was Tobias who offered to give me a talking-to. He came and found me in the hut where Gino was helping me get dressed.

‘Are you happy now?’ he said, his hands on his hips. ‘That’s what happens when you skip training. De Stefano paid you more attention than you deserve. If he’d set his sights on Mario, we wouldn’t be in this position.’

‘What has Mario got that I haven’t?’

‘Self-control. Humility. He’s someone who thinks, is Mario. He knows his business. He has ideas. Ideas so big that when he has two of them at the same time, one has to kill the other so they can both stay in his skull.’

‘Why, don’t you think I have ideas?’

‘Yes, but they’re so feeble, they dissolve on their own in your pea-sized brain. You think you’re punishing De Stefano by losing a match? You’re making a big mistake, my young friend. You’re ruining your prospects. If you want to go back to your souk and watch the donkeys being eaten by flies, no problem. You can do what you like provided you don’t come back and complain about the flies, which’ll be after you this time. De Stefano will get his hands on a champion in the end. There’ll only be one loser, and it won’t be him.’

Gino said much the same thing to me when I got back to the flat. ‘There’s no shame in losing,’ he said. ‘The shame is in not doing anything to win.’

I knew I’d been wrong, but every cloud has a silver lining. Losing so painfully to Gomez was the moment I woke up. With my pride hurt, I vowed to redeem myself. It was no longer De Stefano running after me, but the other way round. I trained twice a day. On Sundays, Gino would take me to the beach and make me run on the sand until I was dizzy.

Around mid-July, a military boxer from the naval base at Mers el-Kébir agreed to fight me. A ring was set up on one of the quays, in the shadow of a huge warship. The area was packed with sailors. Officers in their dress uniforms occupied the front rows. When night fell, floodlights illuminated the quay as if it was broad daylight. Corporal Roger appeared in a white robe, a tricolour scarf around his neck. His arrival set off a wave of hysteria. He was a close-cropped, hefty-looking man with bulging muscles, his right shoulder adorned with a romantic tattoo. He danced around a bit, waving to the human tide, which waved back. The bell hadn’t stopped ringing when an avalanche of blows landed on me. The corporal was trying to knock me out from the start. His comrades cupped their hands around their mouths and yelled at him to kill me. There was a terrible silence when my left hit him in the temple. Cut short in his frenzy, the corporal staggered, his eyes suddenly empty. He didn’t see my right coming and fell backwards. After a moment of stunned silence, cries of ‘Get up’ were heard, and spread through the base. In pride of place among his fellow officers, the commander was on the verge of eating his cap. Much to the joy of the sailors, the corporal braced himself against the floor of the ring and managed to get up. The bell stopped me from finishing him off.