I doubled back, went and joined the tourists. They don’t know anything, don’t suspect anything, they don’t care about history, about anything, they’re here for the sun and the Kodak moments. Being with them is relaxing, even if they look impossibly pretentious posing for photographs next to the Great Pyramid as though it were an old friend. The pyramid is ageless. How many years have they lived, how many years do they have left before they’re six feet under? Why, when they leave their own country, do tourists suddenly forget they are human, mortal? Thinking about Kodak moments, I remembered the photo in my pocket, the photograph of papa next to the Pyramid of Cheops that I’d found it in his suitcase in our house in Aïn Deb that vast and lonely night. Suddenly I was seized by that same frenzy, searching for the roots of evil, staring at the photo of papa dressed like a gentleman from the Belle Époque posing with two English ladies next to the pyramid. In those days, you needed to be rich and somewhat reckless to be a tourist, travel was the hobby of the idle rich accustomed to cruises, to vacations. I don’t know when the photo was taken, probably while Farouk was still on the throne — between 1945, when papa arrived in Egypt, and 1952, when Farouk was toppled in favour of General Mohamed Naguib. Probably the summer of 1946 or ’47. A year later, tensions in the Middle East were running so high after the Palestinian war that it put an end to tourism in Egypt for years. The ladies in the picture, their extravagant outfits, seem suited to the period of the monarchy. I can’t imagine papa dressing up in a white suit and pith helmet in the time of the colonels. Nasser considered revolutionary austerity a great virtue and imposed it on everyone. I can picture life during the monarchy, the sumptuous embassy banquets, the palatial boats, the great mansions of the pashas and the vizirs, the horse rides through the vast demesnes of the Effendi, the cultural visits to the great museum in Cairo, the elegant cruises down the Nile stopping at archaeological sites from Karnak to Aswan, the solitary trips gentlemen made to the hammams, the secret harems, the opium dens. No one evokes this atmosphere, placid and refined, cynical and strained, as powerfully as Agatha Christie, the queen of civilised crime. Papa would have effortlessly fitted into this life, he was educated, spoke several languages and, unlike many German officers, he was extremely cultured, he was handsome, well-dressed and, above all, he had extensive experience with death, something which gives the cynical machinations required of polite society a tragic, pitiless, fascinating depth. He would have effortlessly dazzled the ladies and their powerful patrons — something of an advantage for a spy in the service of the king — or any other power. I’m thinking of the Soviet spies who undoubtedly discovered papa’s Nazi background and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Israel, after all, was nearby, it would be easy to ship him a trunk full of Jewish ashes and daub a yellow star on the door of Hans Schiller, SS officer.
Since I have decided to slip into papa’s thoughts, retrace his footsteps, I think it’s only right that I should live it up here too. We’ll see what happens. I don’t have much money, but Egypt is dirt poor and, in the souk, the few dollars I do have will buy me a lot of the insipid pleasures tourists crave. I went back to the tour group and — whipped into a whirl of excitement and enthusiasm by our guide — we sped through Cairo by day and Cairo by night, raced through the museum, ignored local customs, raided the souks, pissed in the Nile, strolled the great boulevards, sat chattering noisily at a table outside one of the mythic cafés that once made Cairo famous, back in the days of Egyptian cinema, of great divas and fabulous international archaeological expeditions. The lustre had faded somewhat, but we made the best of it, we embraced poverty though we were only slumming it, drank syrupy mint tea rather than champagne, took ramshackle buses rather than barouches and limousines, walked in the sweltering sun rather than in the shade of parasols, and prattled endlessly about the Cyclopean mysteries of the pharaohs. Then we headed for Giza where, like every other tourist, I decided I’d like to have my photo taken next to the Great Pyramid. But the photograph I wanted had to be special, I wanted to be surrounded by a bevy of elderly English ladies. I looked around and found a group of plump, rosy-cheeked English women, their arms bare, and among them — miracle of miracles — one who was lean and angular as flint, wrapped in a prickly shawl, a dead ringer for the formidable Victoria. Now all I needed to was to secure their cooperation. The old dears were only too happy to oblige. I borrowed a pith helmet from a Dutch tourist, hired one of the professional photographers, positioned the ladies as in the original picture, gave them a sidelong smile and shouted, “Maestro! Do your worst!” Five minutes later I had a print, a perfect copy of the original — if you ignore the fact that I looked gaunt as a camp prisoner. On the back of the photograph, I wrote: “Helmut Schiller, son of Hans Schiller, Giza, 11 April 1996.” Half a century separates the two photographs; that and six million dead gone up in smoke.
In the end, I felt pleased with myself. I had stopped at nothing in my search for the truth. There’s nothing now for me to do in Cairo. Or anywhere else. I’m going back to Paris, I have an appointment to keep. From here, it can only lead to the end. My parents died on 14 April 1994, that was the day Hans Schiller finally eluded the justice of men. But for the man that I am to go on believing in the little time he has left, it is essential that there be some particle of good in us. I am not thinking about the God Particle, that doesn’t interest me. If God has failed here on earth, how can he expect to succeed in heaven? I will see to it that justice is done, I am better placed than He.
MALRICH’S DIARY, JANUARY 1997
Needless to say, getting out of Algeria was a fucking nightmare. Boarding the plane seemed to take forever, the paperwork, the Ausweis, the security checks, the waiting, the petty bureaucracy, it’s like the Bonzen in Algeria like nothing better than torturing people. They’re like the Gestapo. I was a bundle of nerves, I was terrified that I’d be dragged off somewhere. At one point, just as we were going through the last security check, an officer in a blue jacket came over to us and said: “You, you and you. . come with me.” I thought I’d had it, but it was nothing — he just needed four young guys to help him shift a crate from a truck and carry it down to the basement. I still can hardly believe he said thanks and gave us each a cigarette. Only after the plane had taken off and we had reached the point of no return did I breathe again. I fell asleep straight away. I needed to build up my strength so I could face the estate. I had a sick feeling. I expected the place to be completely different and, on our way back from Orly airport — where they gave me a hero’s welcome — my mates told me more than enough to convince me that the place would be unrecognizable. Between what you expect and what you find there’s a lot of relativity. The estate looked exactly the same as it ever had, what had changed was the atmosphere; I had felt as though I’d been away for ages, but when I looked up at the tower blocks, it was like I’d never been away. Time, to those waiting on the platform, passes at a different rate relative to those on the train. I felt weird. I had no experience of long journeys, of the dislocation caused by relativity. A week can be a long time and a short time. In Algeria, every second seemed so heavy with meaning that it felt like I’d spent a year there. Back in France, staring up at the tower blocks, it feels as though I’ve only been gone a couple of hours. My mates feel like they’ve lived through a whole century, but to me they seem exactly the same as when I left.