Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

‘If you’d put on shorts, these venerable gentlemen would have been curious enough to ask you if your wooden leg blossomed in the spring,’ Salvo whispered to Tobias. ‘You could have told them about your bravery in the trenches, and in less than a week a medal would have arrived in the post. And we wouldn’t be here gathering dust in the shadows.’

‘We don’t count,’ De Stefano grumbled.

‘It’s because of Tobias’s suit,’ Salvo said. ‘It stinks of bad luck and these gentlemen are afraid it’ll contaminate their fine clothes.’

‘That’s enough,’ De Stefano said. ‘You’re bad jokes are staring to piss us off.’

His speech over, Frédéric was relegated once again to the background, and the Duke invited his guests to continue their visit.

Aggrieved, I went out in the street. The kids had gone back to their corner. Francis, who’d been giving us the cold shoulder since the biased article in Le Petit Oranais , was standing in a carriage entrance, puffing on a cigarette and distractedly stroking a cat with the tip of his shoe. Further back, Gino was leaning on the door of the Duke’s personal car. He hadn’t even taken the trouble to come and say hello to us. Elegant in his neatly fitting three-piece suit, his smile radiant and his face half hidden by dark glasses, he was flirting with Louise, the Duke’s daughter, who was wriggling with pleasure in the back seat. I felt my chest tighten and I quickly turned into an adjoining alley and hurried back to Medina Jedida.

My mother was relaxing in the courtyard. Her Kabyle neighbour, who’d been keeping her company, slipped away when she heard me open the outside door. She walked through the beams of light that filtered through the gaps in the trelliswork like an optical effect. We had been living together for years, but not once had I managed to glimpse her face. She was a discreet, self-effacing woman; all we knew of her were the hoarse cries she aimed at her little devils all day long.

Wearily, my mother sat up. She had aged. Her tattooed face was like a chewed-up old parchment. Of course, with the money I was earning she was eating and dressing properly but, cut off from her sister Rokaya, she lived mechanically, disorientated in this city with its overwhelming noise and bustle. She missed her native village and the people she had once known. My gifts gave her less and less pleasure. My chosen profession worried her. Whenever I got back from a fight, my face bearing the marks of my opponents’ punches, she would go to her room and pray. As far as she was concerned, I was merely a madman who got into fights all the time, and she dreaded the day when the police would throw me into prison. However much I tried to explain to her that it was a sport, all she could see in my new vocation was violence and distress.

I kissed her on the head. She put her arm round my neck. ‘He’s back,’ she said in a toneless voice.

There was a gleam in her eyes that was impossible to decipher, but I didn’t need to ask her who she meant. I headed for the main room, and there he was, sitting cross-legged on a mat, wrapped in a frayed cape, his head bowed, his shoulders hunched, barely visible beneath its shroud of misery. I stood in the doorway, waiting for him to look up. He didn’t move. It was as if he had died while meditating. His hands rested in his lap like two dead crustaceans. His trousers were torn at the knees and clumsily patched on the sides. He smelt of cold sweat and the dust of remote roads, and in the way he held himself bent over his silence there was a kind of surrender that was pathetic in its despair.

Trembling, more moved than I ever thought I could be, I crouched in front of him and reached out my hand to his. At the contact, a shudder went through me. He remained quite still, not moving a muscle.

‘Father,’ I said, almost inaudibly.

He sniffed.

With the tip of my finger, I lifted his head. His broken face was bathed in tears. I took him in my arms and clasped the bundle of bones he had become. We both wept, stifling our sobs as if the whole world might hear us.

When something keeps turning round and round in your head, the streets do the same. I wasn’t walking, I was going round in circles. I’d intended to go to the café on the corner of Boulevard Mascara and Rue de Tlemcen, but found myself at the bottom of Boulevard National. I’d passed the café without even noticing. My steps led me to the seafront. Again, leaning on the guardrail, I wondered what I was doing there. The harbour hid the sea from me, and the buildings behind me blocked my retreat. I climbed back up to Place d’Armes, only to stop at the foot of a monument and realise that I’d come the wrong way. I wasn’t in the street: I was in my head. It was as if a mischievous dream were playing with my sense of direction. At first, I thought it was my father’s return that had sent my head spinning, but I was wrong. My father was merely a vase abandoned in a corner, a shadow in the gloom. He didn’t speak, preferred to eat alone, locked inside his shell. In comparison with him, the sideboard cut a finer figure.

A cooper stopped me outside a warehouse. ‘The people in my village have clubbed together to buy a wireless so we can listen to your fights.’

His voice made my head hurt.

It was Sunday. With families having left for the beach, Oran was drained of life. The avenues were almost empty. Only a few shops were open and there weren’t many people in the cafés. I had the feeling I was lost in an imaginary city stretching on all sides of me through an endless succession of elusive reflections, distorting mirrors, concealed doors and patches of quicksand. I heard voices, met people, shook hands in a kind of fog. I was drifting, not knowing what to do with myself.

I hadn’t planned anything for that day. So I was surprised to end up outside the hut of Larbi the fruit seller. My shoes weren’t suited to the uneven path that led to the Ventabren farm, but that wasn’t a sufficient pretext to turn back. If I was here, twenty-five miles from home, on a whim, there must have been a reason.

By the time I reached the farm, my feet were inflamed. Alerted by Fatma, Alarcon Ventabren was waiting for me under the tree in the courtyard, in his wheelchair. He was pleased to see me. He told me that since our departure the silence of the countryside had been like lead. Even the air, he added, smelt of stale ashes.

‘It’s very kind of you to come back and keep me company,’ he said in Arabic. ‘I’m really touched.’

‘I need your advice,’ I lied.

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place, my friend. A drink before we eat?’

‘I’m a Muslim, Monsieur.’

‘Do you think God is watching us at this hour? At his age, he must be fast asleep in this heat.’

‘You mustn’t talk like that, Monsieur Ventabren. It makes me uncomfortable.’

‘How can you possibly sit through my cock-and-bull stories if I don’t get you drunk beforehand?’

‘I’ll appreciate them more if I stay sober.’

He laughed. ‘Show me your fist, son. Someone told me it’s carved out of bronze.’ He took my wrist, turned it over and over, weighed it up. ‘Fine piece of workmanship,’ he admitted. ‘Try not to stick it just anywhere.’

‘I’ll try, Monsieur.’

After the meal, Fatma served us mint tea. A slight breeze ruffled the foliage above our heads. I helped Ventabren to sit up in his chair, straightening the cushion that protected him from the hard back.

‘Your next match is soon, isn’t it?’

‘The end of next month, Monsieur.’

‘I hear that Cargo fellow’s a tough customer.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘That’s a bad mistake. You have to know the man you’re going to meet. What do your staff do? Twiddle their thumbs? In my day, we sent spies to gather as much information as possible on the opponent. I knew everything about mine: how he boxed, his technique, his strong points, his failings, his latest fights, which hand he wiped his arse with, the kind of brush he used on his hair. And even then there was always something missing. You don’t climb into a ring blindly.’