Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

What was I doing here?

I was unhappy, buried beneath a mountain of despair, disgusted with everything.

Irène returned, looking ghostly. Was it her father or the darkness in my eyes that bothered her? She sat down on a stool near the bed, dipped a handkerchief in a pan of water beside her and began moistening her father’s face. It was as if she had guessed what was making me gloomy and sad, as if someone had told her what had happened between Mouss and me.

Alarcon muttered something in his sleep. Irène listened carefully but couldn’t grasp the meaning. I didn’t react, stuck in a glass mould that forbade me the slightest movement. Blood pounded in my temples at regular intervals, like a leaking tap.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him,’ she said at last. ‘He came down with it suddenly.’

I didn’t know why the effect of hearing her voice took away half my fears.

She stood up and walked past me, her mind elsewhere. I followed her into the kitchen, where the dishes from lunch were waiting to be cleaned. Some of the food hadn’t even been touched, suggesting that things had deteriorated without warning.

‘He really scared me,’ she admitted. ‘I thought he was going to die. I ran to the village to fetch the doctor.’

She grabbed a plate and emptied the food into a cardboard box.

‘If you’d come earlier, I wouldn’t be in this state. I was lost, I didn’t know where to turn. I was in a panic …’

‘Mouss mentioned the mark you have on your lower back.’

I had said it. I would have given anything to take back my words, to swallow them. Now wasn’t the time, I thought, scolding myself. Too late! The burden that had been weighing me down had come out into the open, taking away all my anger and anxiety. I felt as drained as a possessed person from whom the devil has been driven out, liberated but in danger, like a bird that has left its cage and is exposed to the perils of an unknown world.

Irène froze. She stood over the sink for a few moments, speechless, the plate in her hands. Her shoulders slumped suddenly, then her neck. She let the plate drop into the water, took several deep breaths, then slowly turned, her face scarlet, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘What are you trying to say?’ she asked in a hollow voice.

‘Is it true that he knows?’

The colour returned to her face and her eyes darkened. ‘He wasn’t blind, if my memory serves me well.’

‘He says —’

‘Shut up,’ she interrupted me. She wiped her hands on her apron and leant back against the sink. When at last she had her breathing under control, she folded her arms over her chest and looked me up and down with a disdain I had never seen in her before. ‘How long have we been together, Amayas?’

‘Almost a year.’

‘Do you think I was born that day?’

‘I don’t follow you.’

She leant more heavily against the sink, increasingly in control of her anger. ‘I wasn’t a virgin when you had me in the bushes, don’t forget. That didn’t seem to bother you. Worse, you decided to love me all the same. You even thought about starting a family with me.’

‘Yes, but —’

‘But what?’ she shouted. ‘There are no buts. Have I ever tried to find out about your past?’

Her lips were quivering and her eyes held me, motionless, like the double barrel of a shotgun. She was waiting for a word from me to continue. I didn’t know what to say to reproach her.

‘In life,’ she said in a curiously calm tone, ‘you don’t just wipe everything out and start over again. It’s more complicated than that. I’d had a few affairs before you. I’m only flesh and blood. I have a heart beating in here, and a body that demands its share of excitement. But not once did I cheat on my husband before the divorce. And not once have I looked at another man since you took me in your arms … You have to take all these things into consideration.’

She came and stood in front of me, so close that her breath burnt my face.

‘We aren’t from the same class, young man. Or the same race. Or the same culture. And the world is bigger than your tribe. In your world, a woman is her husband’s property. He makes her believe that he’s her destiny, her salvation, her absolute master, that she’s merely a rib torn from his skeleton, and she believes him. In my world, women aren’t an extension of men, and virginity isn’t necessarily a guarantee of good behaviour. We marry when we love each other; what happened before doesn’t matter. In my world, a man doesn’t renounce his wife, he divorces her, and they each go their own way. Our women have a right to live their own lives. There’s no shame in that. As long as we don’t harm anyone, we don’t have to justify ourselves. And for us, a crime of honour is simply a crime; the law doesn’t find extenuating circumstances for it, let alone give it legitimacy. If you seriously thought I was going to wait patiently for you, locked up in my room, doomed perhaps never to meet my Prince Charming, then you’re even more stupid than your people.’

With that, she tore off her apron, threw it in my face and left the room, slamming the door behind her.

I jumped at the noise of the door. A jolt went right through me, as if I’d had a solid right to the jaw. The kitchen seemed as cold and dark as a cellar. I collapsed onto a chair and held my face in both hands, convinced that I had just committed the worst blunder of my life.

Alarcon Ventabren’s cries roused me from the thoughts that plagued me. I ran to him, half blind in the dim light of the oil lamp. Irène was trying to stop her father’s arm waving about in the grip of an attack. The poor man was choking, the corners of his mouth streaming with whitish drool. The upper part of his body was convulsing jerkily. I pushed Irène aside, put my arms round the patient, pulled him out of bed and hoisted him onto my back. His saliva dripped on the back of my neck. Irène ran to open the back door of my car, helped me put her father inside and got in next to me. I started the engine and set off before I’d even switched on the headlights.

We were alone in a grim corridor where faded paint was peeling from the walls, Irène crouching beneath a window, her hands clasped around her mouth, eyes fixed on the tiled floor, and me walking up and down from one end to the other. From time to time, a nurse would emerge from a room or a cupboard and disappear before we had time to catch up with her. The terrified cries of patients reached us intermittently, then silence would fall again on the hospital, as disturbing as a bad omen.

I found it hard to look at Irène. I hated myself for not having respected her emotion, for not having waited for the right moment to lance the boil. I felt bad for her and for me. Yet, seeing her huddled over her sorrow, there in the middle of that corridor lashed by draughts, on a night so black it seemed resistant to prayers and miracles, I was certain that my love for her was unchanged, that the misunderstanding between us had merely strengthened my feelings for her. I loved her, there was no doubt about it, I loved her with all my heart — rightly or wrongly didn’t matter! My heart beat only for her and no tomorrow, no horizon would have glow or meaning without Irène. What did thunder matter when the storm was simply passing; what did an insult matter if a kiss could heal wounded lips? For me, life was starting again, with greater intensity now that a new page had been turned. Irène was the chapter I had chosen for myself in order to be me and only me, an ordinary person whom love would glorify more than any success in the ring. I didn’t need any signs from my hands, I didn’t need anything; it was Irène I wanted more than anything else in the world.

At last, after two hours, a doctor appeared. ‘I’m Dr Jacquemin.’