A little later that morning, Hacine had an appointment at Heillange City Hall, in a shabby ground-floor office. He’d hardly slept, and he was cold. The mayoralty was housed in a former elementary school, which explained its endless hallways, echoing stairwells, and fortress-like chill. In fact, everyone who worked there was careful to always bring a sweater. Hacine hadn’t taken that precaution, and he was freezing his nuts off. This of course put him on edge, especially since he’d rather be almost anywhere else.
Facing him, a young woman with bulging eyes and novelty earrings was studying his resume. She made a comment from time to time, or asked a question. On her earrings, you could make out a little elephant or a cat; it was hard to tell. Without looking up, she asked him:
“Here, for example, what did you mean by that?”
She was pointing at an entry under the heading “Interests.” Hacine leaned over to look.
“It’s boxing,” he said simply.
“I see.”
After getting her bachelor’s degree, the young woman had specialized in employment law, a discipline that benefited from the healthy employment figures of the 1960s. It was a fast track to management positions in human resources, a sector that had steadily grown during the previous thirty years despite the notable job losses that characterized the same period. Once she had her diploma (baccalauréat + five years), it took her less than two months to get a job. As a result, she tended to view unemployment as one of those abstract threats that mainly appeared on the evening news, like malaria, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. At the moment, she was introducing Hacine to the finer points of putting one’s skills in the best light. The boy was being only moderately cooperative. The young woman tried again. She was intrigued by this boxing business.
“And what do you call it?”
“Muay Thai. It’s Thai boxing.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea to put that down?”
“It’s a sport,” answered Hacine.
“Yeah, but with your profile, see…”
Hacine frowned. In his case, this meant looking disdainful while pursing his lips into a duck face. Given the shadow of mustache decorating his upper lip, the resulting look was pretty unusual.
The young woman smiled.
“Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And here, under information technology skills, can you be more specific?”
“Well, computer stuff.”
“Do you have a computer at home?”
“Yeah.”
The boy had hooked his feet around the legs of his chair. It squeaked on the tile floor each time he moved, so he tried to keep still. How much longer was this bullshit going to last?
“Give me some examples. What do you know? Word? Excel?”
“A little of everything.”
“It’s important to be specific. You’re listing real-world skills, see? That’s what you’re selling. Can you run office software, for example?
“Yeah. I do some coding, too. JavaScript. Stuff like that.”
“That’s good. In fact it’s really good.”
The compliment hurt Hacine’s feelings. What did this cunt think, that he just knew how to press the Power button? At that, he shut down. Too bad. She would certainly have liked the edifying story of a kid who went to Microfun every Saturday morning. Located at the foot of the ZUP projects hill, the little store salvaged old computer equipment and passed it on to schools or to the poor, or resold it by weight. A new Amstrad 6128 cost more than three thousand francs, and neither Hacine nor any of his pals could afford gear like that, so they went to Microfun instead. They spent hours dismantling obsolete IBM towers, swapping processors and advice. His eighth-grade tech shop teacher even helped him solder some of the parts. He wound up building a pretty decent tower, powerful enough to play Double Dragon, anyway. But since then, Hacine had more or less quit doing that stuff. As he thought about it, he realized he’d pretty much quit everything recently.
“And you’ve been to Frankfurt?”
He nodded.
“London. And Bangkok.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve done a lot of traveling for someone your age.”
She was looking at him with a friendly smile while fiddling with an earring. Or maybe the smile was mocking. She must think he was a bullshitter. He’d actually never been to Frankfurt—what the hell would he do in Frankfurt?—but that didn’t give this bitch the right to doubt him.
“Do you speak English?”
He moved his head in a way that might mean yes.
“Okay. Anyway, everybody puts that down,” she said, suddenly perking up.
Just then, the woman’s phone began to ring. Her hand hovered indecisively over the phone for two or three rings. Hacine felt more and more tense. Was it some sort of test?
“Hello…Good morning…Yes…Of course…”
Her “yeses” were drawling and motherly. In fact, she gave the impression she was talking to a half-wit. This made Hacine feel somewhat better. Apparently, she talked to everybody that way.
“Of course, sir. Call us back when classes start. Yes, all right…”
She was mimicking the exchange, while taking Hacine as her witness. People asked such questions! After advising her caller to check with the national employment service, she hung up.
“It’s like that all day long.”
There were more questions. Hacine’s resume did have quite a few dubious entries. It’s true that everybody fudged a bit, but it was important to keep it modest. Depending on the situation, transatlantic voyages, fluent English, internships with ministries, and a passion for philanthropy could arouse suspicions. What mainly bothered her was the Thai boxing business.
“See what I mean? Especially given where you come from.”
“But what about the job?” said Hacine. “Do you have a thing or not?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, my dad told me to come to City Hall. He said you had jobs.”
“Oh no, not at all. Your father came to the mayor’s office, but I don’t know what they told him. We just do orientation here. We help people get back into the workforce.”
“So there’s no job, actually.”
“There must have been a misunderstanding. Our role is to help people put themselves across well, regain their self-confidence. We help them write their resumes and get training. We can also do coaching. Besides, you aren’t eighteen yet, are you?”
Hacine confirmed this. He was suddenly sorely tempted to ask her what the fuck he was doing there.
“You’re a minor, too, so it’s nothing doing. And in summer, forget it.”
As Hacine was leaving, she insisted on going with him because she wanted to have a smoke. That way, he was sure not to get lost. The place was practically deserted, and in the empty hallways the young woman’s high heels made a somewhat intimidating managerial clicking. By contrast, her attitude had become decidedly friendly, almost familiar. After all, she was young and open-minded; they could get along. Once out on the sidewalk she shook his hand with obvious pleasure. And then, without warning, her face fell.
“I forgot to ask. Do you give high fives?”
At first, Hacine didn’t understand.
“You know,” she said. “This sort of thing.”
She was holding her palm out, so he was forced to slap it.
“Because I met some employers the other day, they were super put off by that. They have young people who high-five people at work, with everybody. It just doesn’t look good, see?”
Hacine wondered if she was making fun of him. Apparently not.
“I gotta get going.”
“Yes, of course.”
He could’ve taken the bus across the street; the number 11 went straight to his place. But he was afraid she might want to keep him company while he waited. He’d rather walk home. He could sense her looking at his back, until the moment when he turned the corner. It was lucky he had pockets; he could put his hands in them.
Along the way, he stopped at a bakery to buy a Coke and two croissants and ate his breakfast as he climbed the hill to the ZUP projects. It was already hot, and the coldness of the Coke was something miraculous. He soon spotted Eliott hanging out in the courtyard. As they did every year, the fairground people had set up a bumper-car carousel and a little stand where they sold waffles. Hacine and his pals hung out there all day long. When Eliott saw him, he waved, and Hacine ambled over to join him.
“What’s with this piece of shit?” he asked, kicking the wheel of Eliott’s wheelchair.
“Battery’s dead. The motor’s shot anyway, so I took the old one.”
“That sucks.”
“No shit.”
“What’d you do to get downstairs?”
“I manage, don’t sweat it.”
It was a point of honor with Eliott not to let his handicap be a nuisance for people. In fact, it had become something of an advantage. The cops once showed up in the Manet tower lobby for an ID check, when Eliott was loaded like a mule. Not only did the cops not search him, but they even carried him up to the mezzanine so he could take the elevator. Eliott pointed out that you really had to be stupid to stick a stairway right in front of an elevator. The cops agreed, feeling embarrassed, as if they’d drawn up the plans themselves.
“Any news?”
“Nothing new. Dead as a doornail. If we don’t score tomorrow, I won’t have anything left.”
With the Meryems sidelined, the problem of hashish resupply had reached a critical level. Hacine had even tried to call his brother, who lived in Paris.
“What about your brother?” asked Eliott, by coincidence.
Hacine shrugged. They were silent for a moment, then Eliott continued:
“D’you go into town?”
“Yeah.”
“What for?”
“Nothing special.”
Eliott didn’t pursue it, and Hacine went to sit on a low wall nearby.
“Hot as hell already.”
“Yeah.”
Hacine began contemplating the decorations on the bumper-car carousel: Michael Jackson, werewolves, a mummy, Frankenstein. It was gaudy and beautiful, with colored lights that were switched on at nightfall. In the last few years, the other carnival attractions hadn’t bothered to come. Hacine was very fond of cotton candy.
The temperature gradually rose, and the two boys moved into the shadow of the boules court shelter. From there, they could see customers coming. Except that for the last two days, they’d all gone away empty-handed. The buildings around them rose indifferent and cube-like. Dust motes floated in the sunlight.
After lunchtime the others began to show up. The gang usually consisted of maybe ten guys. There was Djamel, Seb, Mouss, Saïd, Steve, Abdel, Raduane, and little Kader. They all lived in the neighborhood. They got up late and came on foot or by scooter. They stayed for a while, went off to take care of stuff, then came back. This way, there was a continuous stream of familiar faces, a rotation of friends that broke up the monotony of dealing. Whatever the case, by the afternoon there were almost always five or six boys endlessly waiting under the shelter, leaning against the fence or perched on a low wall, spitting on the ground and smoking joints. Sometimes older guys came by for a chat. A handshake, a hand on the heart, a few quick words: How’s the family, how’re things, doin’ okay? Most of them had settled down. They were now doing temp work or had little short-term contracts with Carglass or Darty. Sami had just opened his kebab stand near the station. People asked him how business was. Even when he put a good face on it, you could sense the anxiety, the constant fear of bankruptcy. To think he had once been the biggest wholesaler in the valley. Now he drove a little Peugeot 205. Feeling ill at ease, the boys promised to stop by later, and Sami went off to work, his love handles stuffed into an OM Marseille T-shirt, with his two kids and his credit card debt. Then the little kids rode back from the swimming pool on their bicycles. There was some teasing back and forth, but overall there wasn’t much to do while waiting for the bumper-car stand to open. Often, heat and boredom would go to people’s heads like liquor. Guys would even start fighting, just to relieve the boredom and idleness. Then calm would fall again, like a hammer.
Soon little Kader showed up on his scooter. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and rode in flip-flops. He did a wheelie, for show. Seb was there too, with his 49ers hat shoved down to his ears.
“So what are we doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. We move.”
“So, go ahead and move.”
“I mean tonight, man. It’s Friday. What’re we doing? For real.”
“Let’s get a case of beer.”
“Yeah.”
“You guys give me a pain. Swigging beer out of doors, like bums.”
Hacine had spoken, so there was nothing more to be said. He’d been in a foul mood since the start of vacation. It was understandable. His scooter had died in June and since then he’d had to walk everywhere, like a grunt. It started with the ignition, then all of a sudden the cylinders, pistons, rings, and spark plugs all went to hell. With the shortage of hash on top of everything, it was getting really hard to lead a normal life. Hacine spat between his front teeth. Nobody stirred. Eliott took it on himself to roll a blunt.
By a little after three, time had become like a paste, greasy and infinitely stretchable. It was the same thing every day. In midafternoon, a diffuse numbness took hold of the projects. From the open windows you no longer heard the sounds of children or TV sets. The towers themselves seemed ready to collapse, swaying in the waves of heat. Every so often, the howl of a tricked-out motorbike would slash through the silence. The boys blinked and wiped away the sweat staining their hats, lids containing their nervous edginess. The boys felt sluggish and hateful, an acrid taste of tobacco on their tongues. They felt they should be somewhere else, have a job, in an air-conditioned office, maybe. Or be at the seaside.
For his part, Hacine was seriously worried. He hadn’t seen ten customers since the morning. New sources of supply must have sprung up. Supply and demand obeyed the laws of magnetism and had probably been drawn to each other elsewhere, like rejected lovers. If the shortage lasted much longer, he and his friends would be screwed; they would lose everything. He let it be known that his brother might bail them out, but he didn’t really believe it. That son of a bitch was doing business for real, with guys from Bobigny. He was living outside Paris and hadn’t been to Heillange in at least three years. He wasn’t answering phone calls. Couldn’t be counted on. If this went on, they would have to turn to the inbreds. Those guys always had contacts and connections. But Hacine didn’t like the idea at all. Doing business with those guys was really risky. They were capable of anything. Besides, they fucked each other, the degenerates. Hacine felt sick just thinking of it.
He was turning all this over in his head when Fred showed up. He was a true druggie, always easy, always affable. Hacine couldn’t stand him. Especially because the piece of shit acted all buddy-buddy, on the grounds that he had once known the Bouali cousins, the guys who first set up hash distribution in Heillange in the ’80s.
“Greetings, brother,” said Fred.
“We got nothing. Get lost.”
Everything happened the way it usually did. Fred would pretend not to hear, and Hacine became more and more monosyllabic. Then Fred began to beg: a hit, man, just one little hit. Insults started to fly. Eventually they became threats, and Fred agreed to leave, albeit slowly and miserably. His greatest fear was being sober. He hadn’t managed to do anything with his life: no job, no wife, no crime. Living with his mother, he endured in poverty. Fortunately, his mom required a whole pharmacy-ful of medications, so Fred would console himself there when he had nothing to smoke. The local doctors were accommodating. The whole valley was in palliative care, somewhere.
“Seems he’s got the virus, too,” said Eliott, watching Fred slink away.
“That’s bullshit.”
“He’s dying; you can tell.”
“Well, let the son of a bitch die.”
Around five, the bumper-car lady showed up with her mother, who ran the waffle stand. The two spent their time glued to their chairs, stuffing themselves with churros and candy. Oddly enough, the mother was as skinny as her daughter was fat. When they started the generator, the track lit up. Mom turned on her waffle irons and started the cotton candy. The smell of caramel spread through the courtyard. There was music.
For their part, the boys had gone home and now returned with shiny hair and smelling of body wash. Some had gone a little overboard on the deodorant. They tried to look bored and blasé, but mainly they seemed excited. Finally, the girls arrived, two by two or in little groups. Eyes lowered, laughing to themselves, long dark hair, sidelong glances. They settled on the other side of the track, sitting on benches or leaning against the safety barrier. They came from other Heillange neighborhoods, or from Lameck or Étange; some even took the bus from Mondevaux. They were allowed to come because it was vacation time, and provided they didn’t get home too late. ZUP boys didn’t pick up girls in the neighborhood because they inevitably wound up being someone’s sister or daughter. But these visitors were fair game. Because of this tiny piece of county fair, they showed up every day. An opportunity not to be missed.
Hacine was the first to make his way to the cash register. He bought ten tokens for twenty francs. Behind the glass, the woman was already sweating. She recognized the song coming out of the loudspeakers and turned up the volume. It was a sappy Bryan Adams number, and her mother rolled her eyes. She had just started her first waffles and was fanning herself with a want-ads newspaper. The other boys were already lined up to get tokens. They were off and running.
When he’d spent his first ten tokens, Hacine bought ten more. He drove in circles for nearly two hours. His pals bumped into him, and vice versa. And during that time, all he did was think about the girl standing off to the side with a pair of girlfriends, the one with hoop earrings and a French manicure. She watched him, but each time he looked in her direction, she turned her head away. Every day, they hoped something would happen. It never did. He didn’t know her name, or anything. He hadn’t mentioned her to anyone. She left a little before eight o’clock. She never stayed very long.
Feeling disgusted, Hacine left the track and went back to the low wall where he spent his life. Eliott asked him what the problem was.
“Nothing. Just leave me the fuck alone.”
Plus, Saïd and Steve had managed to get girls into their bumper cars. Those losers. Hacine spat between his teeth. Little Kader looked over at him. That was exactly the wrong, stupid thing to do.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you looking at?”
“I told you, nothing.”
“Stop looking at me like that, you little prick.”
This went on for a while, and Kader eventually had to look down. Overhead, the sky was caught in the jaws outlined by the towers. The windows cut into their facades looked like narrow eyes and sick mouths. The sweet smell of waffles hung in the air and Freddy Mercury sang “I Want to Break Free.” After a while, Hacine split. Little Kader was pissed. He’d been chewed out for no reason at all.
“Man, I don’t know what’s up with him,” he said. “We were at a party yesterday, and he was already acting crazy.”
“How so?”
“I dunno, he kicked over a barbecue, called everybody sons of bitches.”
“Well, he’s right. They are sons of bitches.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
They laughed. Still, you had to wonder sometimes whether he wasn’t a little nuts.
Hacine roared down the ZUP hill flat-out, leaning forward on the Yamaha. He raced through downtown in third gear. The trick was to never hit the brakes. You just had to anticipate the turns and give her gas coming out of the curves. The little motor snarled angrily in the narrow streets. As he passed, people saw only a thin figure with two skinny arms sticking out of an extra-large T-shirt. From this sight, and the discomfort it caused, they immediately drew political conclusions. Inside Hacine’s chest, a seventeen-year-old heart was trapped in barbed wire. No way was he stopping for red lights. He couldn’t stand it anymore. At times, death seemed like an enviable fate.
He soon found himself on the departmental highway that ran all the way to Spain, and decided to stop near a field with enormous rolls of hay. He left the motorcycle and walked across the dry stubble. He strode quickly, his lip moist, bare arms swinging along his body. His tongue tasted like a copper coin. He made a dry rustling as he went, leaving a flattened furrow in his wake. He walked until he got tired then sat down in the shade of a hay roll. He took his Zippo lighter from his pocket and started to play with it, snapping it open with his thumb and lighting it on his jeans. The sun had faded and now shed a soft, enveloping light on the countryside. It was an old bronze-colored lighter, like they had in Vietnam. He’d taken it from some kid during the middle-school graduation exams. Every year, ninth-grade students from Hurlevent, a private school downtown, came to Louis-Armand to sit for the test. In their Benetton sweaters, the kids were something to see. Their parents would drop them off while glancing around nervously at the gray public buildings. It was like a train platform after a draft call-up. This republican tradition of holding the exam away from one’s home campus had been going on for a while. The very first sessions produced a variety of plunder and other compensatory vexations. But this low-grade class struggle no longer yielded much. The rich Hurlevent kids spread the word and now left their First Communion watches at home. The ZUP kids weren’t about to steal their Tann’s satchels. Last time, Hacine went after a group of longhairs in rock ’n’ roll T-shirts, which is how he acquired two guitar capos and the Zippo.
Its blue flame smelled pleasantly of lighter fluid, and he lit a piece of straw at his feet. It caught fire immediately. Despite the temptation, Hacine stamped it out with his heel. The copper-coin taste spread through his mouth. He felt acid in his chest and his mouth filled with saliva. He lit his lighter again. The hay roll caught fire in a great crackling of heat and a sigh of smoke. The flames rose, sharp and voluptuous. It smelled wonderful. He took a few steps backward, the better to see. Already the fire was spreading along the ground, seeking more to feed on. Hacine breathed deeply. He was starting to feel the amazing calm that came over him every time. He could finally go home. When he took off on the motorcycle, you’d think the whole valley behind him was in flames.
“Did you smoke again?” asked the old man.
Unable to find his keys, Hacine had had to ring the bell to get his father to open the door. The man stood there with his bare feet in slippers, dressed all in denim, his collar buttoned. The eyes in his wrinkled face were unreadable. His razor had missed a clump of white whiskers under his nose. He was less and less able to see that spot.
“No, I didn’t,” said Hacine. “Okay? Can I come in?”
“You smell of smoke. Are you smoking?”
“I told you, no!”
Frowning, the old man leaned over to sniff his son’s T-shirt. He grumbled, but stepped back to let him through. Once inside, Hacine took off his Nikes. The hissing of a pressure cooker came from the kitchen. It smelled of potatoes.
“Some people, they saw your brother,” said his father seriously.
His rough voice was low and beautiful. Words washed around in it like stones in a sieve.
“They’re dreaming.”
“They say they saw him.”
The boy turned to his father, whose pupils had taken an uncertain edge and opalescent color that normally indicated old age, though he was only fifty-nine.
“Why would they say that if they did not see him?”
“I don’t know. They got mixed up.”
“They told me he was there.”
“It’s nonsense, stop it,” moaned Hacine.
The man seemed dubious. He hadn’t seen his older son for a long time now. Hacine’s heart sank. He and his father were squeezed together in the narrow hallway. The wall had mirrors, old photos, things from over there. Their shoes were lined up on the floor.
“What are we eating?” asked Hacine.
“The usual. Come on.”
The father went back to his stove. He fried two chopped steaks and turned up the volume on the radio, which covered the sizzling of the meat. Then he cut the flame under the pressure cooker, and they sat down at the table. The father drank water; the son poured himself a glass of grenadine. It wasn’t night yet, but the temperature was already more bearable. You could smell coffee that had been kept hot all day. They ate with an elbow on the table, not speaking. Then the phone rang, and Hacine ran to the living room to answer. It was his mother. She was calling from over there. She said it was hot. She said she was happy to be seeing him soon. She asked if he was being good. Then his father took the receiver and talked with his wife for a few minutes in Arabic. Hacine shut himself in his bedroom so as not to bother them.
Later, his father came to get him.
“Did you go to City Hall?”
“Yeah.”
“There was work?”
Though he’d lived here for nearly thirty-five years, Hacine’s father still spoke this approximate French, even while acquiring the valley’s thick accent. Every time he opened his mouth, Hacine felt like hiding.
“Of course not. There wasn’t any job.”
“No job? She told me it was good.”
The old man entered the bedroom, to make sure.
“No,” said Hacine. “You didn’t understand. She’s just there to help people who’re looking for work. But they don’t have anything. They’re useless.”
“How so?”
“She helped me with my resume, that’s all. She’s useless, I tell you.”
“Oh, really?”
The father’s brows contracted in a frown, and he muttered something inaudible in Arabic. Under his mustache, the narrow movements of his brown lips were hard to see. Hacine asked him to repeat it.
“You have to work,” his father declared, with sudden solemnity.
“Yeah, but there has to be a job, too.”
“You find. If you want, you find,” said his father, totally convinced.
“Right. By the way, I’ll go shopping Monday morning. There’s nothing left in the fridge.”
“Yes, that is good.”
It was all very well for the old man to lecture him, but when Hacine filled the refrigerator, the sermons stopped. The boy stood up, saying he was going out.
“To go where?”
“I don’t know. Nowhere.”
“How so, nowhere?”
“I won’t be home late.”
“You always come home late.”
Hacine had already left the room. In the hallway, he quickly put on his shoes and jacket but was unable to avoid a final word of advice.
“If you do stupid things, watch out.”
Hacine promised, and went off to join his pals in the courtyard. Kader was in a grumpy mood, and Hacine teased him just enough to make it up to him. Then they went back to hanging out, watching the bumper-car ballet. Eliott, who had practically nothing left, rolled a needle joint. With six guys, it was pretty tight. And instead of relaxing them, it made everybody uptight.
“So what do we do?” asked Saïd.
It was the ritual question, the same one asked ten times a day.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s move.”
“Move where?”
“Just move, we’ll see.”
“C’mon there, don’t go to sleep on us.”
Each of them tried to drag on the joint as hard as possible. Mouss was the unlucky last one. He just stubbed out the tiny butt in the dirt.
Soon the carnival women switched the electricity off, and the last customers disappeared into the darkness. Then the two women left in turn with the cash box, waving goodbye to the boys. The buildings now composed a landscape of straight lines spangled with glowing points of blue light. The project’s age dissolved in the night. All that was left were masses, edges, illuminated windows, and more boredom.
“Man, it’s depressing.”
“Motherfuck, what do we do?”
“C’mon, who cares? We’ll do something.”
“Roll another joint, at least.”
“No can do, I’m almost out.”
“It’s okay, you’ll score tomorrow.”
“Then we’ll see tomorrow.”
“Don’t be a dick, it’s no biggie.”
“Tomorrow, that’s all.”
The day was ending. On Monday Hacine would see about selling the motorcycle. He knew a scrap dealer. He was sure to get at least five hundred francs for it.