Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

‘My family have nothing to do with my decision.’

‘Damn it, do you realise the grave you’re digging for yourself?’

‘Provided it’s not for you.’

Francis spat on the floor. ‘I always thought Arabs were blinkered. Now I know why you’re their champion.’

I took a step in his direction.

He took out a flick knife. ‘Lay your dirty barbarian mitts on me and I won’t leave you a finger to wipe your arse with.’

His eyes burnt with a murderous flame. The most surprising thing was that neither De Stefano, nor Frédéric, nor Gino condemned Francis’s attitude. We were in the manager’s office. In the embarrassed expressions around me, I saw a faint aversion. Their tight jaws, their drawn features, their stiffness showed revulsion for me. I had strangers around me. These men I’d held dear, these good friends who were as important to me as my family, these fine men with whom I’d shared my joys and sorrows, were rejecting me simply because for once I didn’t agree with their plans. I realised at that moment that I was nothing but a modern-day gladiator, a boxing-gala slave only there to entertain the gallery, that my kingdom was limited to an arena outside which I didn’t count at all. Even Gino was acting in his own interests; he was more concerned about his privileges than my wounds. And I was wounded to the core. Wounded and disgusted.

Sick at heart, my eyes went from Gino to Frédéric, from De Stefano to the flick knife.

‘You bunch of vultures,’ I cried. ‘What I want deep down doesn’t come into your calculations. It doesn’t interest you. All you care about is the trade-off: blows for me, money for you.’

‘Turambo,’ Gino moaned.

‘Don’t say a word,’ I said. ‘I think everything’s been said.’

Francis was just putting away his knife. My right catapulted him against the wall. Surprised, he slid to the floor, his hands over his face. Seeing his bloodstained fingers, he whined, ‘Shit! He broke my nose.’

‘What did you expect from a barbarian?’ I said.

The window pane broke clean across when I slammed the door behind me.

A few days later, I overheard Jérôme the milkman asking Alarcon Ventabren if the men who had come to see him were criminals. They were chatting behind the stable, facing the sun, Ventabren in his wheelchair and the milkman on his van. When he left, I wanted to know more about that strange visit.

Ventabren shrugged. ‘Oh, it’s nothing really bad,’ he said. ‘Your friends are desperate. They told me you’re refusing to go to Marseilles to train and asked me to reason with you.’

‘And?’

‘I think a period of training in France is important for you.’

‘Did they threaten you?’

‘Why would they threaten me? I’ve been punished enough … You know something, my boy? When you choose a path, however difficult it is, you should see it through to the end. Otherwise, you’ll never know what it has in store for you. You’re a champion. You represent a lot of challenges, and a lot of hopes are riding on you. Mood swings have no place in this kind of adventure. You do what you’re told, that’s all. Irène’s a fine woman, but women don’t know when to stop interfering in men’s business. They’re possessive and they exaggerate their role in life. They reduce the basics to the little things that suit them. Men are conquerors by nature. They need space, room to move about in that’s as big as their hunger for success. Wars are men’s obsession. Power, revolutions, expeditions, inventions, ideologies, religions, anything that moves, reforms and destroys in order to rebuild is part of the vocation of men. If it was only up to women, we’d still be chewing on mammoths’ bones in the back of a cave. Because a woman is a fragile creature without real ambition. For her, the world stops with her little family and she measures time in relation to the age of her children. If you want my advice, son, go to Marseilles. Don’t leave the table when the banquet is made up of honours and titles. For a man, life without glory is nothing but a slow death.’

I found his ideas questionable, but I respected his age and experience too much to ask him what he had done to his wife and what he was doing in a wheelchair, turning his back on the rest of the world. I felt too sorry for him in his decrepit state to tell him that no field of honour can equal a woman’s bed, that no glory can make up for a lost love.

Gino was depressed. According to a neighbour, he’d been shut away at home for four days, with the door and shutters closed. His face lined, his hair dishevelled, he sat bent over the kitchen table, his head in his hands, an empty bottle of brandy next to an overturned glass. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him drunk before. His braces dangled on either side of the chair and his vest was an embarrassment.

He looked up at me with a hangdog expression.

‘Were you with the guys who went to bother Ventabren?’

He made a vague movement with his wrist. ‘Piss off.’

‘You haven’t answered my question, Gino. Were you with them?’

‘No.’

‘What did they want?’

‘Why don’t you ask them?’

‘Who were they?’

Gino swept the table with the back of his hand. The bottle and the glass fell to the floor and smashed. ‘Wasn’t that performance of yours enough for you? Now you have to come and piss me off in my own home.’

‘Who were they?’

‘The two guys from Marseilles. You don’t want to rub them up the wrong way, I warn you. When they invest a penny, they see to it that it makes them a fortune. They’re counting on you and they’re very bad losers.’

‘Are you trying to scare me, Gino?’

‘What’s the point when you can’t see the danger?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because you don’t listen.’ He pushed back his chair and got unsteadily to his feet, his mouth twisted with rage. ‘You’re pigheaded, Turambo. Because of you, our team is suspended and our efforts may end in failure. You struggled to get to the well, but once you got there, you spat in it. It’s true, you don’t see any further than the tip of your nose, but not seeing a mountain crumble, not hearing it crashing down on you, isn’t shortsightedness, it isn’t blindness, it’s worse than irresponsibility and stupidity put together. I don’t understand you and I’m afraid you don’t understand yourself. Anyone else in your place would be thanking heaven day and night. You were just a down-and-out doing crummy jobs and getting his arse kicked left, right and centre.’

‘You think I’ve gone up in the world, Gino? I’m still the same wretch I was. The only difference is that now I get my arse kicked by expensive shoes.’

‘Who put that nonsense in your bird brain? That whore who can’t find shoes to fit her and is trampling all over you?’

‘Watch your language, Gino.’

He braced himself against the wall and launched himself at me. ‘Go on, hit me. You’ve just floored me. Carry on. Knock me out. You’d be doing me a favour. I haven’t slept a wink for three nights. Knock me senseless. That way, for a few hours I’ll forget the mess you’re got me into. Because of your stubbornness, I’ve lost my job, lost my bearings, lost my prospects.’

I left for Marseilles.

My training period was revised downwards because of my reluctance and reduced to three weeks; for me, it might as well have been months. I didn’t tell Irène. I didn’t have the guts. One morning, I threw my things in two duffle bags and jumped into a car with the two men from Marseilles, who were waiting for me at the corner of Rue du Général-Cérez. The Duke and his men were at the quay, getting impatient. They were relieved to see me and promised me I wouldn’t regret it. The crossing was rough. I’d never been on a boat before. I was violently seasick. It took me several days and many infusions to get over it.