Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

Salvo slipped a stool under my backside and began to cool me down. The minute’s break went on and on. There were people in the opposite corner and the referee was deliberately not disturbing them; he was letting the corporal recover. De Stefano was ostentatiously looking at his watch to remind the man in charge of the bell of his duty. The fight resumed when the corporal at last deigned to tear himself away from his seat.

Apart from his buffalo charge, which sent him flying into the ropes, the corporal was no firebrand. His right was weak and his left was just hot air. He’d realised he was out of his league and was trying to gain time by subjecting me to exhausting clinches. I knocked him out at the end of the fourth round.

As good losers, the officers invited us to the mess, where a banquet awaited us. The banquet had been intended for the victory of the local champion, which they had thought was a foregone conclusion, and the band that were supposed to have appeared that night left their instruments where they were and didn’t turn up at all. It was a grim party.

De Stefano was on cloud nine. Our clash of egos was nothing more now than a distant bad memory. I resumed my training with ferocious determination and had two successful fights in the space of forty days, the first in Medioni, with an obscure celebrity, the second with Bébé Rose, a handsome guy from Sananas who collapsed in the third round from an attack of appendicitis.

In Rue Wagram, the local kids were starting to make me their hero; they would wait for me outside the gym to cheer me when I came out. The shopkeepers would raise their hands to their temples in greeting. I still hadn’t had my picture in the newspaper, but in Medina Jedida, a legend was spreading through the alleyways, embellished as it passed from mouth to mouth until it verged on the supernatural.

Gino told me that a group of gypsies from Alicante were appearing in La Scalera and that he wouldn’t miss them for the world. He lent me a light suit for the evening and we set off for Old Oran. The coopers were going back to their cellars and the street vendors were putting away their gear. Night had taken the city by surprise while the people on the street were still living their daytime lives. It was always like that in winter. The people of Oran were used to the long days of summer, and when these grew shorter without warning, they went a little crazy. Some automatically went home, others lingered in the watering holes for want of anything better to do, until night brought out its own, and the few shadowy figures who still dawdled here and there were suspicious.

We strode across the Derb and took a few short cuts to get to the Casbah. Gino was really excited.

‘You’ll see, it’s a brilliant group, with the best flamenco dancers in the world.’

We climbed several stepped alleys. In this part of the city, there were no street lamps. Apart from the wailing of babies that could be heard every now and again, the quarter seemed dead. Then at last, at the end of the tunnel, a semblance of light: a lantern hanging as if crucified over the door of a stunted shack. We climbed more stepped alleys. From time to time, in the gaps between the houses, we glimpsed the lights of the harbour. A dog barked as we passed and was yelled at by its master. Further on, a blind accordionist tormented his instrument under an awning, standing there in his wretched state like a statue. Beside him, watching over his whores huddled in the shadows, a potbellied pimp, his loose-fitting jacket open to display his flick knife, was dancing a polka. Gradually, in places, life resumed. We came to a kind of disused barn where whole families had piled in to watch the gypsy show. The performance had begun. The group of musicians occupied a stage at the end of the room. A stunning beauty in a tight-fitting black and red dress, castanets on her fingers and her hair in a tight bun, hammered boldly on the floor with her heels. There were no free seats and the few benches in front of the stage were collapsing under the weight of the people on them. Gino and I sat down on a hump to see over people’s heads and … What did I see, on a patch of beaten earth, aping the dancer? I had to rub my eyes several times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Yes, it was him, stamping his heels on the ground frenetically, moving his hips and buttocks in grotesque contortions, drunk but still lucid, his shirt open on his ebony torso and his tartan cap pulled down over his face … Sid Roho! Sid Roho in the flesh, still delightedly making a spectacle of himself! He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw me waving at him. We threw our arms round each other. The noise of our reunion made the spectators turn to look at us; they frowned and raised their fingers to their lips to silence us.

Sid Roho pulled me outside and we hugged each other again.

‘What are you doing around here?’ he asked.

‘I live in Medina Jedida. And you?’

‘I have a place in Jenane Jato. For the moment.’

‘And how are you managing?’

‘I’m always in two places at the same time; sometimes I’m in a mess, but I get by.’

‘Do you like it in Jenane Jato?’

‘Of course not! It’s a dangerous place. A big-city version of Graba. Lots of fights and the occasional murder.’

He was speaking far too quickly. His words jostled in his mouth.

‘It wasn’t so bad when I arrived,’ he continued, in a sharper tone. ‘But ever since this ex-convict has been parading around with his gang of wild dogs, life’s become hell. El Moro, he’s called. With his scars, he’s the ugliest bastard you’ve ever seen. Always making trouble. If you aren’t happy, he kills you with his knife.’

Suddenly, he perked up.

‘I’ve made a name for myself. Oh, yes! Your brother’s no slouch. He has to leave his mark. He’s the Blue Jinn … What about you, what are you up to? You’re looking good. Big and strong. Do you work in a butcher’s?’

‘I do a bit of everything. Do you still hear from Ramdane and Gomri?’

‘I haven’t heard from Ramdane at all. He went back to his douar and has not been seen since. As for Gomri, I left before you did. I have no idea where he is … Do you remember his “fiancée”? He was the only one who thought she was pretty. A mouse hypnotised by a snake, was Gomri. If you’d stabbed him, he wouldn’t have woken up. Maybe he married her after all.’

After a silence, we again embraced. Tall and gaunt-faced, Sid Roho was as thin as a skeleton, and his wine-reeking breath betrayed how far he’d fallen. Although he laughed heartily, there was no laughter in his eyes. He was like a stray animal exposed to the blows of everyday life. With no family and no points of reference, he trusted his instincts and nothing else, like those wild-eyed thugs who haunted the dark alleys.

I asked him if he had plans and what he wanted to do with his life. He laughed for a moment, then said that someone like him didn’t have any more of a future than a sacrificial lamb and that, if he drifted from season to season, it was because he was a bit like a tree that loses its leaves in winter, only putting on its finery in the spring to play to the gallery instead of advancing in life.

‘You dream you’re a king,’ he said, bitterly. ‘In the morning, when you come back down to earth, the first thing you see shatters your crown to pieces. Your palace is nothing but a slum where the rats pass themselves off as fabulous animals. You ask yourself if it’s worth getting up, because the only thing waiting for you outside is what was there yesterday, but you have no choice. You can’t stay where you are. So you go out and lose yourself in all that crap.’

‘You used to be thicker-skinned than that.’