‘I’m fine here. I have no desire to look elsewhere.’
‘Nobody’s forcing you. Go to that address and judge for yourself. I’m sure you’ll soon change your mind.’
‘I don’t want to change my mind.’
Madame Camélia pursed her lips in a disappointed grimace. She breathed deeply through her nose, betraying an effort on her part not to implode. Her eyes had an unhealthy gleam in the flickering light of the candles. ‘Does Monsieur Bollocq know about your constant comings and goings in my house?’
‘He’s the one who sends me his chauffeur.’
‘When charity is blind, it makes beggars greedy,’ she said in a drawling voice full of disdain.
‘Pardon, Madame?’
‘I was talking to myself … Don’t you think you’re abusing your benefactor’s generosity, young man?’
‘You benefit from it more than I do, don’t you?’
She put her fingers together and placed both hands on the table, inwardly struggling to keep calm. ‘I’m going to be honest with you, my boy. Some of my clients are complaining about your presence in my house. They are men of a certain rank, if you know what I mean. They don’t like to share their private moments with strangers from a world … how shall I put it? … not entirely accustomed to the special features we offer. My clients are officers, financiers, businessmen, in other words, important people, and they are all married. They need to preserve their reputations and their marriages. In this kind of place, discretion is of the essence. Put yourself in their shoes …’
‘I’m not in the habit of shouting what I see from the rooftops, Madame.’
‘This isn’t about you. It’s about their state of mind. Your presence makes them uncomfortable.’
I leapt to my feet. ‘Then why don’t you give them the address you just gave me?’
Before she had a chance to put things right, I left the room and slammed the door behind me. I was sure my presence didn’t bother anyone and that this whole thing was merely the result of the loathing she felt for me. An Arab in her house damaged the special character she was striving to give it. Wasn’t it her ambition to make her brothel the most exclusive in Oran?
Madame Camélia didn’t like me. It wasn’t by chance that she had ‘assigned’ me a Muslim girl. As far as she was concerned, I wasn’t worthy of laying my hands on a European woman. I don’t think she liked anybody in particular. There was too much bile in her eyes, too much venom on her lips; if she had a heart, she would have made sure nobody ever got to it … I didn’t like her either. I hadn’t liked her since the first time we’d met. Her ‘aura’ stank of sulphur. As arrogant as only vice can be when it brings virtue to its knees, she really despised her clients, who, the second they hung up their prestige and status in the cloakroom, let themselves be debauched by a glass of vintage wine and a mechanical show of affection. Her good graces concealed deadly traps; her charisma was tinged with a cold duplicity. She wasn’t made of flesh and blood: she was nothing but calculation and manipulation, the obscure priestess of a despised Olympus where the soul and the flesh were quartered on the altar of desire, having nothing but blatant contempt for one another.
I wasn’t there for her. Or for her girls. I was there for Aïda, and only for Aïda. And although she also belonged to other men, Aïda was mine. At any rate, that was how I saw it. I didn’t just sleep with Aïda, it was a kind of marriage. I had respect for her; I hated the fate that had led her to this centre of lust and vice, this den of demons and perverted angels. In that purgatory of sensuality, it was tit for tat, love reduced to a sordid commodity. Even a false smile had to be paid for; you bought the moment, you traded the sexual act, the least look was added to the bill. Only one aim prevailed: to ensure the client spent excessively and, in order to make this happen, to reduce him to his base instincts, a consenting, devoted slave in search of ecstasy, ready to lose himself in an orgasm only to be born again and again to the craziest fantasies, never satisfied, always demanding, since everything was paid for in cash, since nothing could resist the power of money when the clock on the wall turned into a money-making machine. Aïda didn’t work that way. She was generous and sensitive, without malice or deceit. She was just as good as those respectable women you raised your hat to in the street. I was unhappy to see her being a receptacle for dregs and vomit, offering herself indiscriminately to perverts who, in other circumstances, wouldn’t even have dared look at her. That wasn’t the role of a woman who loved as she could love. Aïda had a soul, an unusual grace, a kind of nobility; she was nothing like her profession, and it was obvious she wouldn’t survive it — with time, I was sure, the little humanity she had held on to would rot in her breast and she would die of it as of a cancer … But what could I do except dwell on my bitterness and clap my hands? Whenever I arrived at the brothel and was told she had a client and I would have to wait my turn, I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. And when I took my leave of her so that another man could immediately replace me, I felt I was burning in a kind of hell. I would return to Oran so sad that my room welcomed night faster than usual. In the morning, when I got to the gym, the punch bag would sag under my blows and I swear I heard it moaning and begging my forgiveness.
*
My conversation with Madame Camélia had left its mark. I was asking myself questions. Did my presence really bother the clients of the brothel? Was I abusing the Duke’s generosity? Strangely, Filippi started sneaking off whenever I asked for him, claiming he had urgent business to attend to or an errand to run for the boss. At the gym, my training left a lot to be desired; I listened only absently to De Stefano’s entreaties. My lack of concentration almost cost me dear. At the end of the month, I had a great deal of difficulty finishing off my opponent, a tough fellow from Boufarik, who was ahead of me on points until the seventh round. My left hook saved me at the last moment. Disgusted by my performance, the Duke gave me a dressing-down in the changing rooms. We returned to Oran by train, each racked by his own anxieties.
At night, when I switched off the light in my room, I would slide my hands behind my head and let darkness overcome my thoughts. Aïda occupied my mind. I would wonder who she was sleeping with at that moment, what impure hands were crushing her. I was jealous, and I was unhappy for her. What future was there for a prostitute? One evening, they would realise that she was no longer as young and fresh as she had been. Her lovers would prefer other courtesans. They would start to desert her, then mock her. The priestess would ask her to pack her bags and give back the key to the room. Aïda would go and stagnate in some rooming house in the outlying districts where the beds were cold and the sheets rank. When she didn’t have enough to pay the rent, she would wander from dive to low bordello, from mezzanine to stairwell, before going back on the streets and using up her last resources walking the pavements. She would pass from a docker to a penniless carpenter, so common and drab now that no pimp would deign to take her on. Then, after hitting rock bottom and absorbing every insult, she would end up in some insalubrious bolthole, defeated, sick, hungry, worn to the bone, coughing blood and longing for death.
I had nobody to share my distress with. Gino was too busy buying himself suits and mixing with polite society to worry about my moods. We hardly ever saw each other. While he strove to become the Duke’s shadow, the Duke having promised him an office in his establishment, I wondered how to overcome the doubts that Madame Camélia had sown in me. I had to come to a decision. I missed Aïda. Confiding in Gino struck me as wasted breath. He would try to dissuade me, would laugh at the feelings I harboured for a prostitute. Wasn’t he against lasting relationships? He would find words to disarm me, and I had no desire to agree with him. I needed to listen to my heart. Lots of boxers were husbands and fathers; they didn’t seem to suffer because of it.