Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

‘What’s got into you, damn it? What quagmire are you dragging all of us into? The Duke won’t let you go like that. We’re both in danger. For heaven’s sake, let’s go back and apologise.’

‘I don’t owe him anything any more.’

‘Don’t be so sure; you owe him more than you can imagine. You were nothing but an alley cat and he made you a tiger. Without him, you’d still be drinking from ditches. I know better than you do how to recognise who’s wrong and who deserves respect … Your problem is, your brain would fit on the head of a pin. You don’t know what’s good for you and what to avoid like the plague. You want some golden advice? Give up the woman. She’s leading you astray. If you meant anything to her, she wouldn’t stand in your way, she’d encourage you to keep going, to win title after title, to reach for the stars. I’m begging you, in the name of our fraternal friendship, our little dreams when we were poor kids, what we’ve been through and what we’ve built up from nothing with our own hands, I’m beseeching you, I’ll kiss your hands and feet, come back to me, come back to us, and get rid of that tramp who’s trying to push you back into the gutter you’ve only just made it out of.’

‘Do you realise what you’re asking of me, Gino? I care about that woman. Not a minute goes by that I don’t think about her, and you’re asking me to forget her. Gino, my dear Gino, can’t you see that I’m happy for the first time in my life? I love Irène, don’t you understand? I love her. My days only have a meaning because Irène makes each one new for me.’

He slapped me. ‘You’re selfish. Stupid and pig-headed and selfish. After all I’ve gone through for you, you’re casting me aside.’

‘Don’t ever raise your hand to me, Gino. I mean it.’

‘Then do what I ask. You’re walking all over me as if I was a doormat. How dare you throw away what we’ve built for you?’

‘I’m really sorry. This hurts me, it really does. I have a lot of affection for De Stefano, Tobias and Salvo. And you’re still a brother to me. But I’m tired of taking punches. I need to get down off my cloud, to walk among people, to live a normal life.’

‘You promised my mother on her deathbed. You swore never to let a serpent come between us.’

‘Irène isn’t a serpent, Gino.’

‘She is, Turambo, only you don’t see it. You’re hypnotised by her like a field mouse.’

‘You’ll get over it, Gino. Your friendship means a lot to me. Let’s not throw it away.’

‘You’re the one who’s throwing it away. You don’t have any consideration for me, or any pity. I’m this close to having a heart attack and you don’t give a damn. If that’s your idea of friendship, you can keep it. I’d never have landed you in the shit. You don’t know how disappointed I am in you. You’re behaving like a hypocrite and a coward. You disgust me. A bastard, that’s what you are, a filthy, ungrateful bastard.’

His words hurt me.

Gino had fire in his eyes and venom in his mouth. His nostrils trembled with resentment, his lips cursed me. He was choking like an asthmatic, his breath hot with the magma rising in him, terrifying in its bile, his features distorted.

‘Be careful,’ he breathed, wagging his finger in my face. ‘You aren’t the one in charge, Turambo. Don’t bury us too soon. I’ve given too much of myself for you and I won’t let you ruin my future.’

‘You see? Your future. If you care so much about yours, why do you want me to give up mine?’

‘One doesn’t rule out the other. Boxing isn’t incompatible with marriage. Marry that slut of yours if you really want to, but for God’s sake don’t sacrifice us for the sake of her lovely eyes.’

‘It isn’t just that, Gino. I’m fed up with licking my wounds while you lick your fingers counting your money.’

‘You’re making money too.’

‘And losing my self-respect. I don’t want to make a spectacle of myself any more.’

‘I beg you, Turambo, try to think for two seconds!’

‘That’s all I’ve been doing for months. I’ve made my decision and it’s not negotiable.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely.’

He shook his head, defeated, then recovered and looked up at me with blood-red eyes, his cheeks twitching. His mouth twisted to one side. ‘I warn you,’ he roared, ‘I won’t let you get away with this.’

A transformation was taking place before my very eyes. A mask was being ripped off a wonderful time of innocence and disinterested complicity, to reveal a new face, repulsive and obscene. Gino was giving birth, painfully, to a character whose dark side I had barely suspected. You would have sworn it emerged from the wall behind him, or from a tomb, stony-faced, eyes full of dust, veiled in shadow, no, worse, embodied in shadow. Gino had the tragic look of someone who has a knife to his throat and who’d be ready to turn it on his best friend to save his own skin. I no longer recognised him. He might well have been thinking the same thing about me, except that I wasn’t asking anything of him, whereas the sacrifice he was expecting of me was tearing us apart. We were no longer on the same side.

‘Are you threatening me, Gino?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, I don’t give a fuck about your threats. The Duke can fire you, lynch you, preserve you in formaldehyde, I don’t care.’

‘You’re a laughing stock, boy. Wake up. Your muse is nothing but a slut who sleeps with the first man who comes along. She’ll kick you out of her bed as soon as she tires of you. Didn’t Mouss tell you?’

‘So it was you who sent him to see me?’

‘Damn right it was. I thought you had self-respect and a sense of honour like the men of your community. I realise now you’re just a fool taken in by a prick-teaser. She’d swap you for a wad of banknotes without even bothering to count them. I’m going to prove to you that that bitch on heat can be bought like any other whore.’

‘Stay away from her, Gino.’

‘What are you afraid of? That I’m right?’

I pushed him away and ran down the stairs.

He ran after me, yelling, ‘I won’t let you sabotage my plans, Turambo, you hear? Turambo! Turambo!’

After driving around the boulevards, I went to a Moorish café near Sidi Blel. The alley was too narrow to drive down. I left my car outside a little park and walked the rest of the way to the café. A few turbaned customers were chatting over their tea. A blind singer was playing the lute on a makeshift stage. I ordered cinnamon coffee and Tunisian doughnuts. I had the feeling I was being born into a new world, leaving far behind what motivated the others more than me. The moorings that had chained me to mad promises and contracts would no longer prevent me from going out into the open air. I had always dreaded confronting the Duke; his social standing, his natural authority, his seismic rages had intimidated me. I never imagined I could stand up to him, let alone inform him openly of my decision. Yet, leaving his office, I had no longer felt a leaden weight on my shoulders; his threats hadn’t worked with me. I was free of that fear inherent in my condition as a ‘native’ forged in the test of strength and irrational guilt. I think I whistled in the street, or maybe I laughed that nervous laugh relieving us of a terror which, in the end, turns out to be as common as it’s unfounded. It was a strange feeling, so light it seemed I was floating. I remembered Sid Roho’s grandfather, who had, according to my childhood friend, lived like a lord even in poverty. Dispossessed of his lands, he had retired to the mountains in order not to be beholden to anyone and spent his life sleeping, daydreaming, poaching and raising a family. Apparently, he’d said, ‘There’s only one choice that matters: doing what we most care about. Everything else is denial.’