Germaine believed that her husband was capable of the superhuman effort it would take to rebuild his life.
Then, one Sunday as we were finishing lunch, my uncle suddenly banged his fists on the table, sending plates and glasses crashing to the floor. We thought it might be another heart attack, but it was not. He leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair, then shrank back to the wall, pointing at us, and thundered:
‘You have no right to judge me!’
Germaine stared at me in astonishment.
‘What did you say to him?’
‘Nothing . . .’
She looked at her husband as though he were a stranger.
‘No one is judging you, Mahi.’
But my uncle was not talking to us. Though he was staring straight at us, he could not see us. He frowned as though shaking off a bad dream, then he picked up his chair, sat down again, took his head in his hands and did not move.
That night, at about three a.m., Germaine and I were woken by the sound of raised voices. My uncle had locked himself in his study, where he was arguing violently with someone. I dashed downstairs to see if the front door was open, but it was locked and bolted. I went back upstairs. Germaine tried peering through the keyhole to see what was going on, but the key was in the lock.
‘I am not a coward,’ my uncle screamed hysterically. ‘I didn’t betray anyone, do you hear? Don’t look at me like that. How dare you sneer at me. I never informed on anyone . . .’
Then the study door flew open and my uncle emerged, raging, his lips flecked with foam, and pushed past without even seeing us.
Germaine was first to go into the study; I followed her. There was no one there.
Early in the autumn, I saw Madame Cazenave again. It was raining hard, Río Salado was gloomy and dismal, the café terraces were deserted. Seeing her come towards me, I realised that she still had the same ethereal beauty, but my heart did not leap in my chest. Did the rain temper my passion, the dreary weather blunt my memories? I did not care to wonder. I crossed the road to avoid her.
In Río Salado, which drew its vital force from the sun, autumn was always a dead season. In autumn, the masks that people wore in summer fell away like the leaves from the trees and, as Jean-Christophe Lamy discovered, deathless loves took on a sudden brittleness. One evening Jean-Christophe arrived at Fabrice’s house, where we were waiting for Simon to come back from Oran. He did not say a word; he simply sat on the veranda and brooded.
Simon Benyamin had gone to Oran to try his luck as a comedian. He had seen an ad in the paper looking for talented young comedians and thought this was his chance. Stuffing the ad in his pocket, he hopped on the first bus, bound for glory. From his expression when he arrived back, it was clear things had not gone as he had hoped.
‘So?’ Fabrice asked.
Simon slumped into a wicker chair and folded his arms, clearly in a foul mood.
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing.’ Simon cut him off. ‘Nothing happened. The bastards didn’t even give me a chance . . . I knew straight off that this wasn’t going to be my day. I hung around backstage for hours before I got to go on. The theatre was completely empty; there was nobody there except an old guy in the front row and some dried-up old witch next to him with round glasses that made her look like a barn owl. They had a big spotlight pointed right on me. It was like I was being interrogated. Then the old guy says, “You may begin, Monsieur Benyamin.” I swear it was like my great-grandfather’s voice from beyond the grave. I couldn’t make the guy out. He looked like he could watch a church burn down and not bat an eyelid. I’ve only just started when he interrupts me. “Do you know the difference between a clown and a fool, Monsieur Benyamin?” He’s spitting the words. “No? Well let me enlighten you: a clown makes people laugh because he is both funny and sad; a fool makes people laugh because he is ridiculous.” Then he waved me offstage and shouted, “Next!”’
Fabrice doubled up with laughter.
‘I sat in the dressing room for two hours trying to calm down. If the guy had come in to apologise, I’d have eaten him alive. You should have seen the two of them, sitting in the empty theatre; they looked like a couple of undertakers.’
Seeing us all laughing, Jean-Christophe fumed silently.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Fabrice.
Jean-Christophe bowed his head and sighed.
‘Isabelle is starting to get on my nerves.’
‘Only starting?’ said Simon. ‘I told you at the beginning she wasn’t right for you.’
‘Love is blind,’ Fabrice said philosophically.
‘Love makes you blind,’ Simon corrected him.
‘Is it serious?’ I asked Jean-Christophe.
‘Why? Are you still interested in her?’ He shot me a curious look, then added: ‘You never did get over her, did you, Jonas? Well, I’ve had it with her, she’s all yours.’
‘Why would I be interested in her?’
‘Because you’re the one she’s in love with,’ he yelled, banging the table.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Fabrice and Simon looked from me to Jean-Christophe. He clearly hated me.
‘What are you telling me?’ I said.
‘I’m telling you the truth. Whenever she knows you’re around, she’s impossible, she’s always sneaking looks at you. If you’d seen her at the last dance, there she was on my arm and then you show up and she starts fooling around just to get your attention. I nearly slapped her.’
‘Love might be blind, Chris, but I think jealousy has got you seeing things.’
‘I am jealous, you’re right. But I’m not seeing things.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ Fabrice interrupted, sensing there was trouble brewing. ‘Isabelle manipulates people, Chris, it’s what she always does. She’s just testing you. If she didn’t love you, she would have dumped you long ago.’
‘It doesn’t matter, I’ve had enough. If the girl I love spends her time looking over my shoulder, then maybe it’s better if I walk away. To be honest, I don’t know if I was ever really serious about her.’
I felt uncomfortable. This was the first time anything had upset the friendship between the four of us. Then, to my relief, Jean-Christophe turned and pointed at me. ‘Ha! Fooled you, didn’t I? You fell for it hook, line and sinker!’
No one laughed. We all still believed Jean-Christophe had been serious.
The next day, as I wandered to the village square with Simon, we saw Isabelle and Jean-Christophe arm in arm, headed for the cinema. I don’t know why, but I ducked into a doorway so they wouldn’t see me. Simon was surprised by my reaction, but he understood.
3. Émilie
12
ANDRÉ INVITED everyone in Río Salado to the opening of his ‘American Diner’. While it was easy to imagine André as a feudal lord, prowling his vineyards, slapping his riding crop against his boots, beating his workers and dreaming of Olympus, the idea of the son of Jaime J. Sosa running a bar, opening bottles of beer, left us speechless. André had changed since his trip to the United States, where his friend Joe had taken him on a dazzling odyssey. America had opened his eyes to a life we could not even begin to understand: something he referred to with mystical fervour as ‘the American dream’. When asked what exactly he meant by it, he’d shift from one foot to the other, then frown and explain that it meant living however you pleased and to hell with taboos and propriety. André wanted to shake us out of our bourgeois provincial habits – he found it intolerable that young people in Algeria did as they were told, played only when they were permitted and did not go out unless they were invited. Society, he maintained, could be judged by the energy, the spirit, the passion of its youth. It was the arrogance of the young that revitalised each new generation. According to him, the youth of Río Salado were deferential, docile sheep, chained to the customs and ideas of a bygone era, completely out of touch with the brave new world in which young men should ‘burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars’. In Los Angeles, in San Francisco, in New York, he told us, young people were busy wringing the neck of filial pieties, shaking off the yoke of family to spread their wings, like Icarus.