‘Come,’ Jelloul said. ‘Come in and meet my father.’
‘No,’ I almost screamed, petrified. ‘I have to get back to my uncle. He’s very ill.’
A group of naked children were playing in the dust, their bellies swollen, flies crawling on their faces. Then I realised that it was not simply the stench; it was the drone of the flies, incessant, voracious, filling the foul air like some baleful supplication, like the breath of some demon that lowered over human misery, a sound as old as time itself. At the foot of a low toube wall, a group of old men lay dozing, mouths open, huddled beside a sleeping donkey. A madman, arms raised to the heavens, stood babbling wildly beneath a marabout tree from which hung talismans, coloured ribbons and candle wax. There was no one else: it was as though the douar had been abandoned to feral children and dying men.
A pack of dogs ran towards me, growling. Jelloul picked up a stone and drove them off. There was silence again. He turned and gave me a strange smile.
‘This is how our people live, Jonas; my people and your people too. Here, nothing ever changes, while you go on living like a prince . . . What’s the matter? Why don’t you say something? You’re shocked; you can’t believe it, can you? Maybe now you know why I call myself a dog. Even a dog would not live like this.’
I stood, speechless; the stench and filth turned my stomach, the piercing drone of the flies drilled into my brain. I wanted to vomit, but I was afraid that Jelloul would get the wrong impression.
He sniggered, amused by my awkwardness, then showed me around the douar.
‘Look at this godforsaken slum. This is our place in this country, the country of our ancestors. Take a good look, Jonas. God himself would not set foot here.’
‘Why are you saying these terrible things?’
‘Because I believe them. Because they’re true.’
Suddenly, I felt more afraid, but now it was Jelloul, his furious stare, his sardonic smile, that terrified me.
‘That’s right, Younes. Turn your back on the truth, on your people, run back to your friends . . . Younes . . . You do still remember your name? Hey, Younes . . . Thanks for the money. I’ll pay you back some day soon, I promise. The world is changing, or hadn’t you noticed?’
I rode away, pedalling like a madman, Jelloul’s catcalls like rifle shots whistling past my ears.
Jelloul was right. Things were changing, but to me it was as though these changes were happening in some parallel world. I sat on the fence, torn between loyalty to my friends and solidarity with my people. After the massacre in the Constantine province, the dawning awareness of the Muslim majority, I knew that I had to choose, but still I refused to take sides. In the end, events would make my decision for me.
There was a fierce rage in the air; it bubbled up from the maquis in the scrubland where militants met in secret, it spilled into the streets, seeped into the poor neighbourhoods, trickled out into the villages nègres and isolated douars.
The four of us who made up Jean-Christophe’s gang turned a blind eye to what was happening in these demonstrations. We were young men now, and if the down on our upper lips was not yet thick enough to qualify as a moustache, it emphasised our desire to be men, to be masters of our fate. The four of us, inseparable as the tines of a pitchfork, lived for ourselves; we were our own little world.
Fabrice was awarded the National Poetry Prize, and Madame Scamaroni drove all of us to Algiers for the ceremony. Fabrice was overjoyed. Aside from the prestige, the winning collection of poems was to be published by Edmond Charlot, an important Algerian publisher. Madame Scamaroni put us up in a charming little hotel not far from the Rue d’Isly. After the ceremony, at which Fabrice received his award from the great poet Max-Pol Fouchet, the prizewinner’s mother treated us to a lavish seafood dinner at a magnificent restaurant in La Madrague. The next day, eager to get back to Río Salado, where the mayor had organised a lunch to honour the town’s prodigy, we set off early, stopping at Orléansville for a snack and at Perrigault to stock up on the finest oranges in the world.
Some months later, Fabrice invited us to a bookshop in Lourmel, a small colonial town near Río Salado. His mother was there, looking stunning in a burgundy trouser suit and wearing a broad-brimmed feathered hat. Smiling benevolently, the bookseller and a number of local dignitaries stood around a large ebony table on which sat piles of books fresh out of their boxes. On the cover, beneath the title, was the name ‘Fabrice Scamaroni’.
‘Holy shit!’ sputtered Simon, who could always be counted on to undermine any solemn occasion.
The moment the speeches were over, Simon, Jean-Christophe and I pounced on the books. We leafed through the pages, turning the books over in our hands, so reverential that Madame Scamaroni was surprised to find a tear that trickled mascara down her cheek.
‘I read your work with great pleasure, Monsieur Scamaroni,’ a man of about sixty said to Fabrice. ‘You have considerable talent and, I think, every chance of reviving the noble art of poetry, which has always been the soul of Algeria.’
The bookseller handed Fabrice a letter of congratulations from Gabriel Audisio, founder of the magazine Rivages, in which the editor suggested that they might collaborate.
Back in Río Salado, the mayor promised to open a library on the main street, and Pépé Rucillio bought a hundred copies of Fabrice’s poems to send to his acquaintances in Oran – who, he suspected, called him an upstart peasant behind his back – to prove to them that there was more to Río Salado than idiots, wine growers and drunks.
Winter tiptoed away one night, and by morning, swallows dotted the telegraph lines like ink blots and the streets of Río Salado were awash with the scents of spring. My uncle was slowly returning to life. He had recovered his health, his old habits, his passion for books; he devoured them, closing a novel only to open an essay. He read in both French and Arabic, moving from El Akkad to Flaubert. Though he still did not venture out of the house, he had begun to shave and dress every day. He now ate with us in the dining room and occasionally exchanged pleasantries with Germaine. As regular as clockwork, he would get up at dawn, perform his morning prayers and appear at the table for breakfast at seven o’clock sharp. After breakfast, he would retire to his study to wait for the newspaper to be delivered, and when he had read the paper, he would open his spiral notepad, dip his pen into the inkwell and write until noon. At one p.m. he would take a short nap, and then pick up a book and lose himself in its pages until sundown.
One day, he came to my bedroom.
‘You need to read this. It was written by Malek Bennabi. The man himself seems a little suspicious, but he is a clear thinker.’
He set the book down on my night table and waited for me to pick it up. It was a slim volume, barely a hundred pages, entitled The Conditions of the Algerian Renaissance.
As he left the room, he said:
‘Never forget what it says in the Qur’an: Whosoever killeth a man, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind.’
He never asked me whether I had read Malek Bennabi’s book, still less what I thought of it. At dinner he only ever spoke to Germaine.
Our lives had recovered some semblance of stability. Things were far from being back to normal, but just seeing my uncle standing in front of the wardrobe mirror knotting his tie was wonderful. Germaine and I waited anxiously for him to cross the threshold, to step outside and rejoin the world of the living. Germaine would throw the French windows open so he could adjust to the sounds of the street again. She dreamed of seeing her husband adjust his fez, smooth his jacket, glance at his fob watch and hurry out to visit a café, to sit on a park bench, to be with friends. But my uncle dreaded the outside world, he had a morbid fear of crowds, he panicked if someone crossed his path. Only at home did he truly feel safe.