I suddenly felt uneasy. In trying to reason with Sid, I had hurt him. I realised it as I walked away. I caught myself slowing down every ten metres, then stopping at the corner of the street. We shouldn’t have parted on a sour note, I told myself. Sid had never refused me anything; he’d always been there for me.
I ran back to where we’d parted company …
The Blue Jinn had vanished into thin air.
*
I looked for Sid in Jenane Jato and Medina Jedida, in the bars where he was a regular, but without success.
After a week, I gave up. Sid Roho must have been playing the fool somewhere, in no way affected by what I’d said. He couldn’t bear a grudge against anyone, let alone a friend. He’d show up eventually, and even if it wasn’t what he would have wanted, I’d ask him to forgive me. He’d brush aside my apologies with a sweep of his hand and, still unrepentant, drag me with him on a thousand dreadful escapades.
But things didn’t work out that way.
I learnt later that I wasn’t the cause of his disappearance. Someone had challenged him and Sid had taken up the challenge. He had vowed to steal El Moro’s dagger in broad daylight, right there in the middle of the souk. The former convict loved to strut around in public with his dagger under his belt, flaunting it like a trophy. And Sid dreamt of getting it off him.
He was caught with his hand on the hilt.
He was first beaten to within an inch of his life, then dragged behind a thicket and raped in turn by El Moro and three of his henchmen.
At that time, a man’s honour was like a girl’s virginity: once you lost it, you couldn’t get it back.
Nobody ever saw Sid again.
4
We were in the cubicle, talking about my next fight, when Tobias opened the little door. He didn’t have time to announce the visitors before they pushed him aside and came in. There were two of them, both dressed to the nines.
‘Are you De Stefano?’ the taller of the two asked.
De Stefano took his feet off the desk to look more businesslike. The visitors said nothing, but it was clear they weren’t just anybody. The tall man must have been in his fifties. He was thin, with a face like a knife blade and cold eyes. The other, who was short, seemed on the verge of bursting out of his grand suit; he wore a huge signet ring on his finger and was puffing at an impressive cigar.
‘What can I do for you?’ De Stefano asked.
‘Forget it,’ grunted the man with the cigar. ‘It’s usually me being asked for help.’
‘And you’re Monsieur …?’
‘You can call me God if you want to. I fear that may not be enough to absolve you of your sins.’
‘God is merciful.’
‘Only the Muslim God.’
He looked us all up and down — Francis, De Stefano and me, Tobias having left — one after the other, in a silence like the lull before a storm. It was hard to know whom we were dealing with, gangsters or bankers. De Stefano couldn’t keep still on his chair. He stood up slowly, eyes alert.
The man with the cigar abruptly took his hand from his pocket and held it out to De Stefano. Startled, De Stefano took a step back before realising that he didn’t have a gun pointed at him.
‘My name’s Michel Bollocq.’
‘And what do you do for a living, Monsieur Bollocq?’
‘He calls the shots,’ the thin man said, visibly annoyed that his companion’s name meant nothing to us.
‘That’s quite something,’ De Stefano said ironically.
‘You’re telling me,’ Michel Bollocq said. ‘I have an appointment and I’m in a hurry. Let’s get down to business: I’m here to make a deal with you. I saw the last match and your boy made an excellent impression on me. I’ve never seen such a strong, quick left. A real torpedo.’
‘Are you involved in boxing, Monsieur?’
‘Among other things.’ He gave me a sidelong look, chewed his cigar and came up to me. ‘I see you’re more interested in my clothes than my words, Turambo.’
‘You look very smart, Monsieur.’
‘Just the coat costs an arm and a leg, my boy. But you’ll be able to afford one just like it one of these days. It all depends on you. You may even be able to afford several, in different colours, made to measure by the best tailor in Oran, or in Paris, if you prefer, although our suits are just as good … Would you prefer a tailor from Oran or Paris?’
‘I don’t know, Monsieur. I’ve never been to Paris.’
‘Well, I can give you Paris on a silver platter, however big Paris is. And you could walk around in a coat and a suit like this, with a red flower in your buttonhole matching your silk tie, diamond-studded gold cufflinks, a hundred-gram signet ring on your finger, and snakeskin shoes so classy that any arse-licker would be happy to wipe his tongue on them.’
He went to the window and gazed out at the backyard, his hands behind his back, his cigar in his mouth.
The second visitor bent over De Stefano and said in such a way as to be heard by all of us, ‘Monsieur Bollocq is the Duke.’
De Stefano turned pale. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his throat. ‘I’m truly sorry, Monsieur,’ he stammered, his voice barely audible, almost obsequious. ‘I didn’t mean to show you any disrespect.’
‘That would have been very stupid,’ the man said threateningly, without turning. ‘Can I speak frankly? From what I’ve seen, things aren’t exactly going well around here. Even a fugitive with a price on his head wouldn’t want to hide out in this fucking circus. Your gym’s on the skids, your safe’s clearly full of cobwebs, and your ring leaves a lot to be desired.’
‘We lack funds, Monsieur,’ Francis cut in, ‘but we have ambition by the barrel.’
‘That certainly makes up for a lot of difficulties,’ the man admitted, puffing his smoke out over the fly-blown window pane. ‘I like fools who wade through shit while keeping their head in the clouds.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Monsieur,’ De Stefano said, glaring at Francis.
‘Shall we talk business now?’
‘I’m all ears!’ De Stefano almost cried out, pushing a chair of chrome tubing in the man’s direction.
I’d heard of the Duke. It was the kind of name you didn’t have to remember since he moved in high circles, in other words, in a world beyond the reality of people in our situation, but which, once you were aware of it, became imprinted on your subconscious, remaining lodged there in dormant form, so that the first time it was mentioned, the memory of it came flooding back. In boxing circles, people instinctively lowered their voices when the name came up in conversation. The Duke was a real bigwig; he had a stake in everything lucrative in Oran and aroused as much fear as admiration. Nobody was sure of the exact nature of his business, his stamping grounds, the people he rubbed shoulders with. For many people, the Duke was someone to be mentioned fleetingly in idle talk, like the prefect, the governor or the Pope, a kind of fictitious character who was the subject of rumours or news items and whom you were never likely to run into. Seeing him in the flesh had a strange effect on me. The top dogs you hear about are seldom like the image you have of them. When they come down off their clouds and land at your feet, they disappoint you a little. Stocky, with stooped shoulders and a paunch, the Duke reminded me of the Buddha I had glimpsed in a second-hand shop on Place Sébastopol. He had the same solemn, morose air. His round, shiny face formed flabby jowls at the sides before ending in a resolute chin that was almost out of place in that mass of fat. His hairy hands were like tarantulas waiting for their prey as they lay on the armrests, and the gleam in his eyes, barely perceptible above his excessively high cheekbones, went through you like darts from a blowpipe. In spite of all that, seeing him sitting in a worn armchair in our dilapidated cubbyhole in Rue Wagram, where respectable people seldom ventured, was a huge privilege for us. Our gym wasn’t highly regarded. It hadn’t produced any champions for ages, and lovers of boxing cold-shouldered it, calling it a ‘factory for failures’. The fact that an important man like the Duke should honour it with his presence was a rehabilitation in itself.