Every morning the shame of being oneself must be discovered anew. But, before this, the grace of a secret respite is granted. The night’s dream disintegrates, leaving nothing more in Capitaine André Degorce’s heart than a vague premonition of grief to come. He has no past, no family, no name. He simply lies there on his bed, his eyes open upon the light of a dawn he does not recognize. As yet nothing exists in this world apart from the incredibly calming image of Tahar, seated on his straw mattress, his feet and hands shackled, smiling at something invisible. Capitaine Degorce would like to go on enjoying this sweet obliviousness, but he cannot stop himself wondering who this man is and then he remembers brutally. The recollection is pitiless.
(I am a jailer, his jailer.)
Seated on the edge of his bed, he surveys his bare legs with disgust, goose pimples everywhere, the hairs standing up on the livid skin of his thighs. He dresses with the feeling of hiding a loathsome secret from view and gulps down a large cup of tepid coffee which makes him feel nauseous. He smokes several cigarettes at the open window, sucking in the damp, cold air. A yellow glow lights up the horizon and the call to dawn prayers arises from the Casbah. When the muezzin has fallen silent the sun appears above the city’s apartment buildings. Capitaine Degorce paces along empty corridors. He hears murmuring and moans from behind the doors of the cells. Two harkis are energetically cleaning the floor in one of the interrogation rooms. Adjudant-chef Moreau sits on the corner of a table, and seems absorbed in the glum contemplation of the ceramic friezes at the corner of the ceiling – sinuous stylized flower patterns, yellow, green and blue, which look strangely dull under the harsh brilliance of the electric light bulb. One of the harkis lets his mop fall in order to stand to attention, the other steadies it to his side, doing what he can to adopt a more or less regulation position. Degorce signals to them to carry on and goes to shake the hand of Moreau who has stood up to salute him.
“How’s things, mon capitaine? Would you like some coffee? We have some freshly made.”
The capitaine consents as he watches the foaming of the grey water across the tiles.
“Thank you, Moreau. What I’ve just been drinking was really vile.”
He follows the adjudant-chef into a little room arranged as a makeshift kitchen. They drink their coffee in silence. Capitaine Degorce pulls a face as he sets his cup down.
“This is vile, too. But, at least it’s hot.”
Moreau smiles faintly.
“May I have your permission to speak about something, mon capitaine?”
“That’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard, Moreau,” Capitaine Degorce remarks good-humouredly. “How do you expect me to tell if I can give you permission if I don’t know what it’s about? Speak anyway. I’ll soon tell you if you’d have done better to keep your mouth shut.”
Moreau extracts a crumpled packet of Gitanes from his pocket. He takes out two cigarettes and smoothes them for a long time before offering one to the capitaine. He explores his pockets again in search of a box of matches.
“Spit it out, man!” says the capitaine impatiently, offering his lighter.
Moreau still takes the time to inhale deeply.
“It’s about Febvay.”
“Febvay?”
“Sergent Febvay, mon capitaine.”
“Well? Do you mean you still haven’t banished him to Tamanrasset for me?” Capitaine Degorce asks, hating the falsely assumed casual tone he can hear in his own voice.
Moreau pointedly refrains from smiling and stares attentively at him, drawing on his cigarette.
(I’m no longer good for anything. Nothing at all.)
“The thing is, mon capitaine, I’d like you to reconsider your decision. I don’t think it’s fair. Febvay is a good fellow.”
“A good fellow,” Capitaine Degorce repeats. “A good fellow.”
He forces himself to recall the revolver thrust into the girl’s vagina, the sergent’s laughing face and repeats again, almost in a murmur: “A good fellow …” hoping that anger would come to his aid and let him get carried away, but nothing happens. He does not even manage to feel concerned.
(I simply ought to be somewhere else, somewhere else.)
He closes his eyes for a moment and the words come.
“I don’t propose to discuss your quite fascinating conception of what constitutes a good fellow, Moreau, because it doesn’t interest me and because it’s beside the point, do you see, it’s totally beside the point. Let me brief you on what’s at stake here and when you’ve understood this clearly yourself perhaps you’ll be able to back me up effectively by making sure the men never forget it, instead of trying my patience with reports on your early morning cogitations. What’s at stake, Moreau, is the sense of our mission. What’s at stake is what justifies it and it’s very simple, really very simple. What we do here only makes sense because it’s effective. It’s only acceptable from a moral point of view because it’s effective. It enables us to save lives … innocent lives. Effectiveness is our only goal and that’s what sets our … limits. If we lose sight of effectiveness …”
“But, mon capitaine, we don’t …”
“Be quiet when I’m speaking, adjudant-chef, be quiet!” says Capitaine Degorce crisply, fully aware that he has found his authority again. “Confine yourself to paying attention and keeping quiet until I tell you to speak. So, if we lose sight of effectiveness, if we allow people like Febvay to run amok and take perverse pleasure, lubricious pleasure, in the … in the operations of … the process, we are no longer soldiers fulfilling their mission, we’re … I don’t know what we are. I don’t even want to think about it. Do you understand?”
“Yes, mon capitaine. I understand. What Febvay did was out of order. Totally out of order. And I was totally out of order in letting him do it.”
“I’m not obliging you to say this, Moreau. And don’t make too much of that aspect of the problem.”
Capitaine Degorce pours himself another cup of coffee without taking his eyes off Moreau. He has just found honourable and rational motivation for behaviour which, the previous day, at the moment when he totally lost control of himself, was motivated by nothing more than frayed nerves caught on the raw.
But the most troubling thing is that the line of argument that absolved and justified him, was not even something he had to fashion for himself, it was already there, immediately to hand, he has heard it a hundred times in the mouths of his superiors and all he had to do was to take it up for his own use with equal fluency and conviction, reproducing it even down to the calculated hesitations, circumlocutions and euphemisms, and for these, since he did not invent them, all he had to do was to let the powerful tide flow through him, like foul water along a sewer, a tide of words whose impeccably logical sequence required neither his input nor his assent. Yet every time he has himself heard this line of reasoning being advanced, notably in the robust version of it favoured by the colonel, he has experienced an extraordinary revulsion, shuddering with disgust at every word uttered, not so much because there was a brazen lie within it, but because at the very heart of this brazen lie, expression was being given to the purest, the most undeniable truth, a truth over which he had no control and which held them all, Moreau, Febvay, the colonel and himself in its icy grip.
“It was out of order, I know, mon capitaine,” Moreau repeats. “But we all screw up at times. We’re all human.”
Capitaine Degorce makes no reply.
(We’re all human. But that’s the fault, not the excuse. The fault.)
“It’s not easy here,” pleads Moreau again. “It’s the arsehole of the world here.”
“To the best of my knowledge,” says Capitaine Degorce, “and to take up your elegant metaphor, the world has a number of arseholes.”
Moreau smiles weakly.
“So what about it, mon capitaine?” he asks. “He’s already felt the weight of your fist in his face. Couldn’t that be enough? Please.”
Capitaine Degorce knows he risks nothing now by appearing magnanimous. He couldn’t give a damn about Febvay. If he gets rid of him they’ll give him another Febvay. Men have lost all that used to make them unique, for good or ill. They are all alike.
“Very well, Moreau. Tell Febvay the incident is closed. And tell him to keep out of my way in the corridor over the next few days. To give me time to calm down completely.”
Adjudant-chef Moreau lays a grateful hand on his arm.
“Thank you, mon capitaine, thank you.”
For a moment Capitaine Degorce wonders why Moreau is so keen to keep Febvay at his side, for the sake of what shared past, what blind affection, what fatherly protective impulse. He could try to find out, he could have a heart to heart talk with Moreau, break out of the glutinous straitjacket that restricts him, speak words that are really his own, but once again he feels overcome by a longing to be somewhere else, somewhere, he now realizes, where he should have been since he woke up.
“Let’s just say that I’m doing this for you, Moreau.”
Capitaine Degorce leaves the room, saying, “I’m going to look in on Hadj Nacer.” He takes a few steps, and turns back towards the adjudant-chef.
“Do you need me this morning?”
“I’ve got some leads to follow up, mon capitaine. An individual to bring in. But I can look after all that on my own.”
*
He squats unmoving on his mattress, as in Degorce’s dream, but he is so tranquil one could believe him to be seated in the cool shade of a palm grove at Timimoun or Taghit, watching the undulation of the dunes caressed by a warm wind, beyond the filthy wall, absorbed in the contemplation of sweet and mysterious things that belong to him alone.
“Good morning,” says Capitaine Degorce, stopping himself at the last minute from saying, “Did you sleep well?”
Tahar greets him with a tilt of his head.
“I have no news concerning you. I shall certainly have some during the course of the morning.”
“It’s not important,” Tahar says.
The capitaine remains standing for a moment before sitting down facing his prisoner. He feels obliged to explain his presence, he searches for some kind of pretext, but can find nothing to say apart from the truth and the simplicity of this truth gives him an immense feeling of well being.
“If you are willing to do so … I wanted to have a conversation with you. If you are willing. I don’t want to intrude on you.”
“We can talk, capitaine,” says Tahar. “We can talk.”
Capitaine Degorce relaxes and leans back against the damp wall, with half-closed eyes. “I’m not at peace with myself,” he says softly and adds in even quieter tones, as if to himself, “Not at peace at all …” A painful emotion weighs upon his chest. He could have said these words to Jeanne-Marie, instead of persisting in writing to her in the same set phrases, the only ones his mind is apparently capable of producing now and at the cost of such a painful effort whenever he tries to address his wife and children, and of course Jeanne-Marie would not have judged him, on the contrary, she would have preferred a thousand times to be sharing his torments and doubts, instead of wearing out the patience of her love against the ramparts he has erected around his heart, day after day, a heart filled with silence, or he could have sought an interview with the colonel and spoken these same words to him, without beating about the bush, as befits a free man on whom his actions confer the inalienable right to express himself as he likes, and what would it matter to him if that idiot did not understand him or bawled him out or threatened to place him under arrest? He had no need of the colonel’s respect, but above all, he should first have spoken those words to himself, confronted them on his own, and gauged the fearful weight of them, he should have taken thought before incurring the guilt of such a terrible transgression by uttering them here, face to face with a man in chains whom he has spent weeks hunting down and who remains his enemy, a man who has ordered the deaths of innocent civilians, and armed those who killed them, on a number of occasions, who has sown death and terror and who seems as serene and easy as if all this spilled blood were no more important than a rainstorm blown away by the wind. And it is for this reason, Degorce knows it well, that these words can only be spoken to him.
“I understand,” murmurs Tahar.
The softness of his voice suddenly makes Capitaine Degorce horribly ill at ease.
“No,” he says in firm tones. “I’m not at peace. And so, you see, when I told you yesterday that it’s all finished, I was not seeking to impress you or anything, I was not being triumphalist, not at all. I said it because it’s true, it’s finished. It’s only a matter of time. If you come into my office you’ll see it for yourself at once. You’ll see the organization chart, your organization has been almost entirely dismantled, its total dismantling is inevitable, truly, and so, it’s finished. But this victory, this victory …” The capitaine shrugs. “… I suppose there must be some less painful victories, victories one can be proud of. Well, let’s say this is not one of them and I should personally have preferred to have had no part in it.”
He lights two cigarettes and offers one to Tahar.
“Why?” Tahar asks with genuine interest. “I don’t believe in your victory at all. But if you are sure of it, why?”
“You know why,” says Capitaine Degorce.
“No, I don’t know,” insists Tahar. “Tell me.”
Capitaine Degorce waves the smoke away with an open hand and takes refuge in silence for a moment.
“You know,” he finally says, “I was in the Resistance –” and holds back from adding, stupidly, “As well.” “And I was arrested. In 1944. Arrested and interrogated.”
He has confessed this dozens of times, in confident tones, to Algerian prisoners, as he did only the previous day to Abdelkrim, seeking out weak spots, each time seizing the right moment to establish an apparent human contact with the man being spoken to, either so as to lead him to think that what he has just suffered was commonplace and trivial, or on the other hand to let him glimpse a feigned weakness which might encourage fresh trust, without his realizing that such trust would be his undoing. Capitaine Degorce has learned to modulate his declaration, adopting the tone most appropriate to his chosen goal, donning a mask now of compassion, now of spinelessness, now of arrogant disdain, and on each occasion he has concentrated on this goal to the extent of forgetting that he was talking about events that had actually taken place. But today there is not this goal and for the first time the words send him back to the Gestapo command post in Besançon, where two men, whose faces he has forgotten, but not the smell of their tobacco and eau de cologne, stroll slowly round him, rolling up their sleeves with fastidious care in the June heat. He understands the intent of their theatrical display and tries to breathe steadily without following them with his eyes, but he cannot control the thumping of his heart. A few weeks before, when Charles Lézieux, his mathematics teacher in the senior preparatory class, agreed to entrust him with his first mission of clandestine billposting, a pathetic mission, he said to him: “If you have the misfortune to be caught, André, don’t seek to play the hero. Try to say nothing for twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours. That will be enough.” Tied to a chair, as the two men prowl round him with the calm assurance of predators, André Degorce only asks himself one thing: will he be able to hold out for twenty-four hours? This question totally absorbs him, prevents him thinking about his parents’ loving care, his dreams of winning a place at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, his long walks after school on spring evenings beside the river Doubs in the company of Lézieux, the laughing eyes of an unknown schoolgirl whom he will never meet again, the gentle warmth of the midnight Masses of his childhood, all the things whose memory is waiting to slip into his soul and move him and bend it until it breaks under the weight of sadness and when one of the men finally strikes him with his hand and the signet ring he wears bursts open his lip, he is almost relieved because he knows the answer will come soon. Yes, it is a real relief, he remembers it clearly, because hope and fear have been brutally driven out by the supreme intervention of physical pain which also dislocates memory, thought and time, but the answer will not come, it has never come, each moment has been curiously nullified or extended, one second following another second, they are absorbed into nothingness, where they congeal to form eternity and twenty-four hours is now utterly meaningless. Capitaine André Degorce again sees him-self naked, lying on the ground, his knees pressed back into his chest, no longer knowing what part of his body to protect, there is an uncanny slowness about the way the two men lean over him, he can smell them, feel the heat of their breath, there is an electric light bulb, a bare wire, the grey china of a bath, a sky overhead of soapy water that tastes of blood and suddenly he is alone, breathing greedily, a hand is pulling at his hair, he has emptied his bowels beneath him, he hears an unhappy voice saying disapprovingly, you’re really a swine, young man, a filthy swine, where were you brought up? His broken ribs are making him wail like a newborn baby, but he can no longer feel any pain, pain has become the intimate stuff of his being and he is delaying the confessional moment from second to second, the delicious moment when he will be able to say the name of his mathematics teacher, the only name he knows, he delays it until, without his having said anything, they lock him up in a cell, from which he only emerged to be sent to Buchenwald. At the transit camp, he finally learned that ten days had elapsed since his arrest, but he has never known how much time the interrogation lasted. On the station platform the scents of summer and the vastness of the sky make him giddy and when the van doors close on him all the memories of his youth, which the dominance of the pain had so far kept at arm’s length, come flooding in all together, they melt into one another and become concentrated into a single feeling, one of absolute simplicity, the poignant feeling of life’s sweetness, he is nineteen, sobs choke in his throat and if at that moment someone had promised him he could return home and see his mother again, he would have told them all they wanted to know. His Gestapo torturers ought to have known that, they should have granted him the respite that would have opened his soul to them, but they could not care less about what he did or did not confess, they only wanted to test and punish him. They had no need of intelligence because Charles Lézieux had been arrested an hour before him, just as he was getting ready to meet André, and there had never been any secret to protect.
During all these years he has never really thought about any of that again; the wars he has fought in did not leave him time to do so and the ten months spent in Buchenwald extend behind him like a vast grey steppe that cuts his life in two and separates it for ever from the lost continent of his youth, but he has not forgotten it. June 1944 silently left its mark in his flesh, inscribing there the imprint of an unforgettable lesson, one that has enabled him to explain to his N.C.O.s: “Remember this, gentlemen, pain and fear are not the only keys for opening the human soul. They are sometimes ineffective. Don’t forget that there are others. Homesickness. Pride. Sadness. Shame. Love. Take note of the person in front of you. Don’t be pointlessly stubborn. Find the key. There’s always a key –” and he has now arrived at the absurd and intolerable conviction that he was only arrested at the age of nineteen so as to learn how to fulfil a mission that would be entrusted to him in Algeria thirteen years later. But this he cannot say to Tahar.
“You were interrogated yourself in 1944,” Tahar repeats. “Yes, now I understand.”
His attentive and sincerely distressed face exasperates Capitaine Degorce. “It’s your methods!” he says drily. “It’s your methods that force us to …” He stubs out his cigarette on the ground and tosses the end into a corner of the cell. “You leave us no choice!” he says and once more restrains himself from adding at the last moment, “What do you expect us to do?”
“That’s strange,” Tahar murmurs meditatively.
“Yes, it’s strange,” Tahar continues. “You see, I was sure it was we who had no choice about our methods.”
Capitaine Degorce looks at him for a long time.
(Logic can be turned inside out, like a glove. Lies. Truth.)
He has regained his composure. He no longer wants to talk about the war. They have taken Tahar’s shoes away and he is wearing darned socks. Capitaine Degorce is bizarrely troubled by this.
“I haven’t asked you: would you like tea or coffee? Would you like a wash? I must warn you, the coffee’s foul …”
A soldier comes into the cell: “You must come, mon capitaine, it’s the colonel on the phone.” Degorce stands up.
“I’ll come back,” he says to Tahar.
He turns to the soldier: “You will remain with …” He does not know how to refer to Tahar. He does not want to say “the prisoner”, nor to use his nom de guerre or refer to him as “Monsieur”. “What is your rank in the A.L.N.?” he asks Tahar.
“I’m a colonel in the A.L.N.”
“You will remain with Colonel Hadj Nacer,” he resumes. “Make sure he has everything he needs. And give him back his shoes, if he wishes.”
*
“You’ve landed us in deep shit, Degorce, do you know that? Are you aware of that? I hope you had a vile night, a really vile night, like me. What the hell are we going to do with your Hadj Nacer? I swear I’d have liked it better if he’d put up a bit of a fight when he was arrested, the bloody bastard, that would have suited us very well, I’m telling you …”
“I don’t understand, sir. Yesterday you were very pleased.”
“Well, there you are, that’s life, my friend. First people are pleased and then they’re not … That’s the way it is … You put on your thinking cap … you see things in a different light … Aspects you hadn’t considered … complications … Good God, man, it’s not hard to understand! Do you never think things over yourself?”
(The cretin has had a bollocking.)
“On occasion, sir.”
“How is he, Hadj Nacer? Depressed?”
“You saw him yesterday, sir. No, he’s not depressed. Certainly not.”
“And what about security? There’s no risk of him escaping? Or trying?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you sure? Absolutely sure?”
“Yes, sir. Absolutely.”
“Good … Good … Very good …”
“When do you want me to hand him over for trial, sir? Once that’s done, it’s no longer our problem.”
“I don’t need your opinion, Degorce. I’ll ring you later today to give you your instructions.”
*
The morning post. Jeanne-Marie. His parents. Marcel. Capitaine Degorce fingers the envelopes and again that vision of Claudie appears, so clear this time: she lies there on a bed with heavy white sheets, her nostrils pinched in her pallid little face, her eyes ringed with blue shadows and a rosary wrapped round her stiff fingers. All about her are her grandparents, her uncles and aunts, her mother, holding Jacques by the hand, and even Marcel, who has somehow or other escaped from his African hell and is in rude health: the only one missing is himself and his absence is so natural that nobody notices it. Perhaps he is still in Algeria, perhaps in a room next door, detained there in perpetuity by his guilt. His morbid fantasies have become a matter of habit, they no longer genuinely distress him, even though he cannot help indulging in them.
(My God, my God, what a tragedy …)
He opens the letters and glances through them one after the other.
“André, my child, my dearest, Claudie and Jacques have been particularly tiresome today, they really need …”
“My dear son, your father’s health, which until now …”
“… and this time I’m having these frightful attacks of diarrhoea that give me no respite and exhaust me terribly …”
What is the point of all this news? In what way does it still concern him? What can he do about it? He would prefer to receive no more letters. Nor to write any more. He would like to be taken back to the spring of 1955 at the hotel in Piana. His clothes still hung loosely about him, his stomach gave him pain every time he ate food that was a little too rich, but the sky was so bright. Claudie had twisted her ankle running on the beach and he had gently massaged her foot as she watched him, making little grimaces of pain from time to time to which he responded with self-pitying exclamations that made her burst out laughing.
“… and we send you all our love …”
“… André, you are so dear to us …”
At Piana his heart was not empty. He was not ashamed of himself.
“… and maggots in my eyes, live maggots, flowing like tears.”
*
A little Arab boy of about ten is sitting on a bench in the corridor. A soldier squatting in front of him is doing conjuring tricks for him. A five-franc piece disappears from his hand, to reappear in his mouth or behind the ear of the child, whose eyes open wide.
“Who is this lad?” Capitaine Degorce asks.
“He’s the son of a suspect, mon capitaine.”
Moreau emerges from the interrogation room and takes the capitaine aside a little.
“The one I picked up this morning, mon capitaine, he talked. Solid stuff, I think.”
“He’s talked? Already?”
“Yes, mon capitaine, but it wasn’t all that difficult, you know. He’s a hefty fellow, very moody. So I got them to bring out the generator, the electrodes, the whole kit, under his nose. I asked one of the lads to connect up to see if it was all working. They brought a bucket of water and sponges and I explained to the fellow that in my opinion, tough guy as he was, there would be no point in our getting rough with him. I said I was sure he was brave and wouldn’t talk, well, you get my meaning. Then I said, as we didn’t like wasting time, I’d also brought in his youngest son and we were going to watch together to see how the kid would stand up to the shock treatment. And they brought him into the room. I just had time to say, we’re going to take off your shirt and trousers, young man, like on the beach, we’re going to show your Dad a trick, and the guy said he’d talk. And straight off, he began to spill the beans, no problem. We almost had to shut him up! A piece of cake, mon capitaine.”
“Well, there you are, Moreau,” says the capitaine. “You’re becoming an ace psychologist, aren’t you? And what then?”
“He gave us a name, mon capitaine. A guy who works at the port. A trade unionist. A storeman, I think. Or an accountant. A commie. A Frenchman, mon capitaine.”
“They’re all Frenchmen, Moreau.”
“Yes, mon capitaine. You know what I mean.”
“Yes, Moreau. I know what you mean. Good. You go and fetch him for me. And when he’s here, call me.”
“At once, mon capitaine.”
In the corridor the little boy gets up and starts running. His father has just emerged from the interrogation room between two harkis. He is a man of forty-five, tall and wiry. His frizzy hair is almost entirely grey. He bends down to pick up the child in his arms. He hugs him to himself with all his might and throws Capitaine Degorce a long look, filled with gratitude and despair. His eyes are moist, almost tearful, like those of an old man. His lips tremble.
(There’s no harm in this. It’s how things ought to go all the time.)
“I’ll come with you as far as the car, Moreau. I’ve not been out at all today. I need a breath of air.”
The sun is shining and it is very hot now. The sky is still an indeterminate, ugly colour, a pale milky blue that reminds Capitaine Degorce of the devout pictures on the backs of which his mother used to write greetings for his birthday or the new year: the child Jesus would be depicted there, pale and podgy, in a pose of vague solemnity, on his mother’s knee, or the martyrdom of obscure saints, being lashed, cut up or boiled alive, their mouths open to emit cries that looked like moans of ecstasy, while in the background angels sounded trumpets in the same pasteboard sky. Capitaine Degorce has never told his mother how embarrassing he found these naive depictions, how little they matched the nature of his faith. He could not help detecting in them something stale and corrupted which he now perceives in the perverseness of the Algerian sky. To the south huge yellow and dark brown clouds are gathering on the horizon. Capitaine Degorce’s skin is damp. He goes indoors to wash his hands and rinse his face with cold water. He wants to go back and see Tahar, to sit down facing him in the reassuringly dim light of the cell. He returns to his office where the morning papers have been left. Tahar is on the front page, beneath unanimously triumphant headlines. Capitaine Degorce lacks the courage to read the reports, all that clotted, sterile prose. He fiddles vaguely with his letters again and glances up at the top of the organization chart. The photograph of Tahar ought to be marked with a red cross, but he does not want to do it. A foolish superstition. He will be decorated or promoted for having arrested him, that is certain, and the notion is suddenly intolerable to him.
(Time will pass, thank God.)
Time will pass. He will leave El-Biar. He will leave Algeria. He will return to Piana for another holiday and rediscover pure air again, rediscover the joy of speaking spontaneously, once he has embraced his wife, kissed his children’s brows, they will come to life once again and rediscover their places in his heart.
(But how will I be able to embrace them?)
He gets up and marks the red cross. Soon the organization chart will be completely covered in red crosses and he will be a commandant. He thinks about this with indifference now. The future is just as unreal as the world that surrounds him. In the photograph on the organization chart Tahar looks sad and resigned. On the front pages of the newspapers all this sadness has disappeared. He smiles politely, as if the photographers thronging around him were worthy of his consideration and courtesy. At his side the colonel is smiling too, a ghastly complacent smile: for all the world as if the two of them were about to go out to dinner together. And Capitaine Degorce suddenly realizes that it is these photos that have saved Tahar’s life. The previous day the colonel had been unable to resist his impulse to summon the press so he could strut before them like a peacock, he arranged this on his own initiative with no thought of anything other than satisfying his own vanity and this initiative has not found favour in high places because now that Tahar has been in the limelight he can no longer disappear.
(Thank goodness for that idiot.)
The generals must have been livid, including Salan himself, and doubtless the resident minister, they must have rung Paris and ordered the colonel to find a solution, but there is no solution, it is too late and the colonel is reduced to simmering in his own helplessness, regretting that things had not turned out differently. Capitaine Degorce can hear his exasperated voice on the telephone, he remembers his repellent insinuations and feels humiliated that he should be supposed capable of carrying out such foul tasks without turning a hair, as if he were a hitman, a performer of dirty jobs and not a French officer, and rage overwhelms him to the point that he almost telephones the colonel to hurl abuse at him.
(What have you made of me, my God, what have you made of me?)
But nothing lasts. His most powerful emotions cannot sustain their intensity for long, they become pallid and tepid and are all blended together into a vague feeling of desperate weariness that does not leave him. Everything is false and hollow. How could he have failed to understand at once what the colonel meant? Who’s the idiot now? There must be icy, reptilian blood flowing in his veins. His thoughts are slow, bogged down, constantly faltering. They no longer interest him.
(What have you made of me, my God, what have you made of me?)
And the voice says “my God” well enough, but he does not know to whom this question is addressed.
*
Robert Clément. Twenty-four. Accountant in a shipping company. Came to Algeria in 1954. A slightly built young man with a patchy moustache that makes his face look even more youthful. He sits on the chair with his back very straight and stares at Capitaine Degorce and Adjudant-chef Moreau with open disdain. His shirt is soaked in sweat under the arms.
(The big moment in his life.)
There is a protracted silence and when Capitaine Degorce considers it has lasted long enough he asks cheerfully: “So, are you a communist?”
“That’s no concern of yours,” the young man replies, “but yes, I’m a communist. Is that a crime now?”
“Oh no, not at all!” the capitaine exclaims, smiling and adds with conviction, leaning towards Clément: “I’ve nothing against communists, you know. Nothing at all. Indeed quite the contrary. I owe my life to a communist, just imagine. It’s true! If you stay with us for long enough I may have the chance to tell you all about it. Raymond Blumers. Does that mean anything to you? In the Resistance.”
(Truth. Lies.)
Clément shakes his head. “No.”
“No?” Capitaine Degorce repeats sadly.
“No. And I couldn’t care less about it.”
“Mon capitaine,” suggests Adjudant-chef Moreau. “Maybe if I tickled him in the chops a couple of times it would improve the comrade’s manners.”
“No, Moreau, no,” says the capitaine. “Monsieur Clément is vexed and I expect he has reasons for this. We can make the effort to understand his little emotional fluctuations. Because he knows very well that being a communist is not a crime. But assisting the rebellion is a different matter. That’s more than a crime. It’s treason. What do you think about that, Monsieur Clément? Do you think ‘treason’ is the right word or can you perhaps convince us that it’s an exaggeration?”
“I’ve betrayed no-one,” says Clément. “And you have no right to detain me for my ideas. I demand that you release me.”
Moreau gives a loud guffaw. Capitaine Degorce adopts a contrite expression.
“I’m afraid you don’t understand the situation. There is no right. There is only you, locked up here with us. For as long as we deem necessary. Or for as long as I choose. I could keep you here until the Last Judgement – oh, excuse me – until the Revolution comes, you see, I’m flexible. We don’t have to account to anyone. And for as long as you don’t talk, believe me, you won’t leave here.”
The capitaine turns to Moreau.
“We’ll give our young friend some time to think about all that.”
The adjudant-chef touches Clément’s moustache and pulls a face.
“So that’s your way of going into mourning for Comrade Stalin, is it? Well it makes you look like an idiot, my lad. You look like a right idiot.”
“Just leave him to stew for a bit,” says Capitaine Degorce, once the door is closed. “And then you can come back and turn up the heat. But don’t lay a finger on him. Scare the living daylights out of him. But don’t lay a finger on him. I don’t want him to be able to say anything at all about us when he gets out of here. Understood, Moreau?”
“Yes, mon capitaine.”
*
“I’m getting a meal brought to us. I’ve had nothing to eat all day.”
Tahar is still in his socks. His shoes have been placed in a corner, slippers of plaited leather. Capitaine Degorce gives them a quick satisfied glance before plunging into gloom as he recognizes in this the tangible and ludicrous symbol of his own power. He has the power to make a pair of shoes appear or disappear, to decide who shall remain naked and for how long, he can give orders for day and night to be excluded from the cells, he is the master of water and fire, the master torturer, he controls a vast, complicated machine, full of tubes, electric wires, buzzing sounds and flesh, a machine which is almost alive. He supplies it constantly with the organic fuel its insatiable greed demands. He makes it function, but it rules his existence and against it he can do nothing. He has always despised power, the immeasurable powerlessness its exercise conceals, and he has never felt so powerless. A soldier brings two plates and Tahar eats heartily.
“You know,” Capitaine Degorce finally remarks, “I don’t get the impression your arrest has really pleased my superiors.”
“Of course,” agrees Tahar.
“Why of course?”
Tahar finishes the contents of his plate and wipes his mouth.
“In chess, I believe, there are situations where in the middle of the game one of the players understands that he can no longer win. Any possible move, any move at all, whatever he does, will only make his position more difficult, you understand. Every choice is a bad choice. And the player knows this but has to continue the game. Perhaps, if he is skilled, he can make it last a little longer, but nothing decisive can happen now. This is your situation, even if you yourself are not aware of it. Not arresting me is bad. Arresting me may be worse. There are only bad choices. For us, capitaine, the opposite is true. If we win here, that’s good. If we lose, if you arrest everybody, it’s still good. A martyr is a thousand times more useful than a fighter. That’s why you will never see victory. You will make a good move or two and on account of these good moves …” Tahar shrugs fatalistically: “You will end by losing. If God wills!” he concludes with a smile.
(So that’s it. A fanatic. Cold and calculating. A fanatic’s calm indifference. That’s all it is.)
The disappointment is not painful, however. It makes everything easier to bear, starting with himself. Capitaine Degorce does not even feel as if he has been duped. He does not regret the time spent here, nor having naively allowed himself to make regrettable admissions. It makes no difference now. Everything is perfect, inoffensive and smooth.
“I don’t play chess,” says Capitaine Degorce, getting up. “I’ll leave you now.”
“I’m very sorry for you,” Tahar murmurs.
Capitaine Degorce turns abruptly to face him.
“Pardon?” he says frostily. “I beg your pardon?”
Tahar is leaning forward, his hands clasped, and looks at him with sad eyes. The capitaine feels the painful burning of his compassion, he would like to be angry, summon up stinging words and walk out without looking back, but is incapable of this. He stands there at a loss, his certainties brusquely reduced to ashes.
“You need faith, capitaine, it’s a vital need, I believe,” says Tahar, “and you have lost faith … Please, sit down for a moment more …”
And Capitaine Degorce sits down.
“… You have lost faith and you cannot recover it because everything you are fighting for no longer exists. And I’m very sorry for you.”
“What do you know about it?” asks the capitaine in a toneless voice.
“There are so many things that have to be renounced,” Tahar says sadly, leaning forward even more, “so many things, you think I don’t know? I know and so do you, and there are some men who manage it very well, it’s very easy for them. But someone like you … How could you manage it without a little faith? It’s impossible, quite impossible …”
Capitaine Degorce gently shakes his head.
“Faith?” he asks. “Do you think faith can justify what you’ve done? In Philippeville? At the Milk Bar? At El-Halia?”
He intended his question to be ironic and is amazed that it does not sound it at all. “Or, indeed, what I’m doing, here?” he asks again.
“Oh no!” replies Tahar. “Faith justifies nothing … That’s not its role, no … Besides, what use are justifications?”
Capitaine Degorce does not reply.
“I should like to smoke,” says Tahar and the capitaine lights two cigarettes. Tahar settles back against the wall and smokes with visible pleasure.
“Have you ever been out into the bled, the interior, capitaine?” he asks after a moment.
“Yes, I’ve been there,” Capitaine Degorce replies, “and I can see what you’re driving at. I can see very well. I’m not saying everything is as it should be. I know there are things … injustices … But there are other ways. And when peace is restored, you’ll see … We can put things right …”
He is dismayed to realize how little he believes in what he is saying. Words have become heavy again, indigestible, dirty.
“It’s true, capitaine,” says Tahar with a smile. “That’s precisely how it will happen. We will put things right. But not you.”
He suppresses a yawn and carefully stubs out his cigarette.
“What’s the weather outside?” he asks.
“It’s a fine day,” Capitaine Degorce says. “And hot.”
“A fine day,” repeats Tahar.
“Would you like to have some air for a while?” Capitaine Degorce asks. “Have a walk in the courtyard? I could, if you like, if you’ll give me your word …”
“I cannot give you any word.” Tahar cuts him off. “Besides it’s simpler if I stay here. It’s much simpler like this.”
“As you wish.”
They remain silent. Tahar closes his eyes. Capitaine Degorce has hardly touched his meal. The congealed food left on his plate rather disgusts him. He ought to summon a soldier to clear away. He ought to smoke less. He would like to continue the discussion, but he says nothing. The war bores him now. He would like to ask Tahar to talk about his family, he would like to talk about his own, tell him how he loved mathematics more than anything and it was only after the war that he decided to embark on a military career. He would like to be able to forget the handcuffs, the walls of the cell, the barricaded city. Tahar opens his eyes and leans towards him once more.
“Above all, capitaine,” he says, with much warmth and conviction, “whatever you do, don’t believe you’re to be pitied, I urge you. You’re not to be pitied. Do you know that?”
“I don’t complain about anything.”
“That’s good. Because you’re not to be pitied. And neither am I.”
*
A terrible south wind has arisen from the Sahara, an apocalyptic wind, twisting the tops of the palm trees, whirling along the empty avenues and it has spread a yellow light saturated with dust and sand over the city. All other colours have disappeared. The white of the great Haussmann-style apartment buildings that line the streets, has become ochre and the blue cast iron work seems to be forged in dark amber. Sergent Febvay and one of the soldiers are staring curiously out of the window.
“Alright, lads, this is not a weather station,” growls Adjudant-chef Moreau.
“Well, Moreau,” asks Capitaine Degorce, “is he showing sense, that fellow?”
On hearing his voice Febvay turns round and salutes. He has a bruise on his left cheekbone. Not as large as the capitaine would have liked. But this does nothing for him. He observes Febvay’s contrite face, his look of a child caught out in wrongdoing, and no longer feels any anger towards him. Rather a schoolmaster’s secret sympathy for an unruly dunce.
“Mon capitaine,” begins Febvay, “I just wanted to say …”
Capitaine Degorce makes a brief hand gesture.
“Right, Febvay. Not another word about it. Not another word. Do your job and watch your step. Well?” the capitaine asks again, turning to Moreau.
“Nothing, mon capitaine,” says Moreau. “Nothing at all. He’s acting high and mighty. He’s as good as telling us to fuck off. He’s spouting a whole rigmarole about freedom of thought and the emancipation of oppressed peoples. A whole lot of bollocks like that. A real variety act.”
“We’re in no hurry,” says Capitaine Degorce. “I’m sure he won’t hold out.”
“With your permission, mon capitaine,” remarks Moreau. “He’ll hold out even less if we apply a little current to his goolies, not very much, mind you. This one’s all mouth, nothing more …”
“Not like the Kabylian,” says Febvay.
“Oh, the Kabylian,” says one of the soldiers. “Now he had balls, that one!”
A brief discussion follows concerning the respective merits of various suspects under interrogation in which it is unanimously agreed that the courage and endurance of Abdelkrim Ait Kaci were exceptional and Moreau gives great admiring nods of his chin with a look in his eyes akin to nostalgia. “A man of courage, yes …” agrees Capitaine Degorce and he is appalled to realize that he, too, is beginning to find conversations of this type irresistibly fascinating.
(Oh, the poverty of our souls!)
Men’s minds are capable of encompassing so many marvellously diverse things. But from those first days at Buchenwald, Capitaine Degorce remembers, they lose their attraction and quite simply cease to exist, beginning with the most elevated, the most worthy of respect, until, in the end, the simplest abstract thought becomes impossible. If the truth be told there is no thought at all and all that is left in the brutalized and shrunken mind are the typical concerns of an incredibly primitive life form, a blind, patient and obstinate one – a bacterium imprisoned in an ageless glacier, a larva in the darkness. Tirelessly you contemplate, your eyes shining with desire and respect, the voluptuous spectacle of a mouth methodically chewing a piece of bread. Three bodies hang from the gibbet, other condemned men await their turn, and you can think about nothing other than the moment when you will take refuge in the huts from the cold wind of autumn 1944 which sweeps the courtyard, causing the corpses to revolve at the ends of their ropes. The God you stubbornly pray to is now no more than a tyrannical and barbaric idol from which you no longer expect anything further than escaping a little bit more from his boundless and unreasonable anger. All the resources of the brain have become wholly condensed into a kind of instinctive and servile cunning, and all that remains of your former feelings are abrupt surges of irrational emotion, like the arbitrary affection with which Raymond Blumers, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, suddenly surrounded André Degorce, old Blumers, who derided his crossing himself and his prayers and called him “the little priest”, but who used all his mysterious influence so that André’s name would appear on the list for the Arbeitstatistik squad, snatching him, as if by magic, from the hard labour that was gradually killing him and sending him to do accounting in an office, and now every evening, as he ate his soup, André threw Blumers glances filled with animal gratitude, but he did not shed a tear when he witnessed his hanging in February 1945, once more rooted to the spot, grotesquely standing to attention, on the vast parade ground, any more than he wept when he thought about his parents or about Lézieux, or about what life might hold in store, because in what life has become there is no longer any room for pure sorrow. And this, too, is criminal – but it is how life protects and perpetuates itself, by making itself blind and deaf. It has taken Capitaine Degorce such a long time to understand that he was not guilty of any crime and when the Americans forced the people of Weimar to visit the camp, he was the one who lowered his eyes in shame in front of them. And now something similar has happened once again, just here, on the other side of this sombre mirror, for himself and for all the men under his command, something he cannot pardon, even if he no longer lowers his eyes in front of anyone.
(My God, what have you made of me?)
“I’m going to my office.”
“Very good, mon capitaine.”
Febvay smiles at him and he smiles back.
(These are the outer limits of the world. Interrogation rooms. Endless cells and corridors. This appalling yellow sky. Lost bodies. Lost souls. Unbearable nakedness.)
It is all they have in common: forecasts and assessments of the resistance of bodies, as if their work did not consist in gathering intelligence at all but in arranging a series of tests, designed to throw light on some hidden, essential, primitive factor, the unique source of all value. They are researchers, specialists in a subtle form of analysis, obsessive visionaries, and the mystery it is given to them to contemplate today, as a reward for their zeal and devotion, has burned their eyes. Night has fallen over all they once loved and they have forgotten it, possibly for ever. The image comes back to Capitaine Degorce of the faceless figure leaning over him at the Gestapo post at Besançon, he can hear the panting breath, he catches a shifty glance at his bruised body, the corner of the mouth twitches with greed and disgust and he knows that he understands this man as intimately as if he had become a part of himself. He understands Moreau, he understands Febvay and the humblest of his soldiers without having to exchange a single word with them. They have undergone the same metamorphosis and become brothers. The circumstances of their past lives count for nothing, any more than the nausea which the revelation of this kinship provokes in him. He no longer has any other family and the people who write to him every day are strangers. The ties that bound him to his parents, to Jeanne-Marie and the children, have vanished, leaving behind, like an absurd imprint, only a certain number of habits and automatic thoughts which it is impossible to be rid of, but which no longer signify anything. Perhaps those ties themselves only ever existed in the form of inconsistent notions or conventions, it is impossible to remember and Capitaine Degorce has the feeling that he has been transported so far away he will never return. He ought to have the courage to cease replying to the letters still lying there on the desk, filled with incomprehensible phrases and sentiments.
“… a little springtime snowfall, that came from the Jura, which has frozen our bones to the marrow …”
“… and everyone is so proud of you, André: Jean-Baptiste, although he is enjoying his retirement, is almost sorry he can no longer …”
“… and you know, dear brother-in-law, how grateful I am to you for taking care of Jacques, for whom you will be the model and the father he deserves, while I am nothing but …”
It would have been better for Claudie not to have been born and for Jeanne-Marie’s first husband not to have died. Perhaps she still thinks of him with longing when she walks past the photograph on the living-room wall. Capitaine Degorce is resigned to never matching up to this first love, of which he knows nothing. He is well aware that Jeanne-Marie always gave herself to him with more compassion than desire and for the first time he feels a painful bitterness about this.
(It’s true, everything I’m fighting for no longer exists.)
But in reality the thoughts oppressing him carry no weight and the lightest breeze disperses them. He is being unjust towards himself and even more unjust towards those who love him. It is not true, he has not distanced himself from them and what he is fighting for is still alive, he is carrying out a mission, an extremely painful and taxing one, but indispensable in order to put a final end to the terrorist attacks. No other method of action is conceivable and he is not called upon to justify himself. Only a coward and a traitor like Général de Bollardière can put his own sentiments before the needs of the common good. He is not a coward. Later on he will explain this to Jeanne-Marie. For the moment he needs to concentrate and not to forget this fact. He needs to clarify his mind once and for all and put an end to these exhausting and pointless mood swings. He reads the letter from his parents attentively and promises to write them a good, long reply.
*
He is in the middle of staring at a blank sheet, pen in hand when the ringing of the telephone rescues him. The colonel’s voice is amazingly soft and controlled.
“We’re handing Hadj Nacer over to the law, Degorce. He’s being sent to Paris. He’ll have to find a way to save his own head. Or else let them cut it off. We’ve done more than play our part, it seems to me.”
“Very good, sir. Where should I take him? And when?”
“You, Degorce, will not be taking him anywhere. Your role stops here. And, by the way, I am to pass on to you the heartiest congratulations from …”
His tone is frank and warm now, but Capitaine Degorce no longer hears him.
“Sir,” he interrupts. “What does that mean, my role stops here? What arrangements are envisaged?”
“Lieutenant Andreani will come to collect Hadj Nacer tonight. Just Hadj Nacer, and he will take charge of him until his transfer to metropolitan France tomorrow during the day.”
“Sir,” says Capitaine Degorce, trying to master an emotion he cannot explain to himself. “Sir, I don’t understand the purpose of proceeding in this way and I request permission to take care of Hadj Nacer up to the end.”
“No,” says the colonel.
“Sir,” insists Capitaine Degorce, “he’s my prisoner. Andreani has nothing to do with this, and I insist …”
“Not another word, dammit!” explodes the colonel. “Your prisoner! Your prisoner? Who do you think you are, in God’s name? You’re an officer, dammit! An officer in the French Army, not a bandit chieftain. And you have superior officers, remember. Superior officers who make decisions without needing your advice, is that clear?”
“Sir, I don’t understand the point of involving Lieutenant …”
“Listen, Degorce,” says the colonel with a sigh. “My God, frankly, I’m being very patient with you. There may well be matters you are not aware of. Who knows, security considerations, for example …”
“Sir, the prisoner is perfectly secure here and …”
“That’s enough!” roars the colonel. “Andreani will come tonight and that’s all there is to it! I’m fed up to the back teeth with your idiocies.”
And he hangs up.
*
He cannot understand what it is that distresses him to this extent. Regret at having wasted his time trying to write impossible words instead of spending it with Tahar or the prospect of handing him over to Andreani. He puts away the writing paper and paces round his office, smoking. He would like to be able to do something, but he does not know what to do. He calls Moreau and informs him of the decisions made by the general staff.
“Fine,” says Moreau.
“Now this is what we’re going to do,” says Capitaine Degorce. “Pick five men for me and keep them in readiness. And when Andreani arrives and we take Hadj Nacer to him they will pay him the full military compliments.”
“Military compliments, mon capitaine?”
“Do you have a problem with that? Does it shock you? Please speak freely.”
Moreau shrugs.
“Listen,” Capitaine Degorce, goes on. “We have to be able to show respect to worthy enemies. This is something that does honour to us. Do you understand? It’s important.”
“Fine, mon capitaine.”
“Tarik Hadj Nacer is a worthy enemy, Moreau. Truly worthy.”
“Very good, mon capitaine, I’ll see to it,” says Moreau, doing an about-turn.
The capitaine remains sitting on the edge of his desk for a moment, then goes out into the corridor.
“Moreau! Come back here for a moment. I haven’t finished.”
“Yes, mon capitaine?”
“Look here, Moreau, there’s something you ought to know. This is my own initiative. It’s quite personal on my part. I’ve not told anyone about it. I don’t have anyone’s authorization and I’m not sure I would have been able to get it. So there you are, I’m not ordering you to do this, Moreau. If you have a problem with it I’ll ask someone else to see to it. You must feel totally free. I should welcome your support, but I shall not hold it against you if you want to opt out. You have my word. I’ll find someone else. There you are. You decide.”
“What you’re doing has my full support, mon capitaine,” Moreau replies at once. “That’s what I think. I’ll see to it. I’ll be glad to see to it. Thank you for taking me into your confidence, mon capitaine.”
(My family.)
“It is I who thank you, adjudant-chef,” murmurs Capitaine Degorce, shaking his hand. “Thank you.”
He feels completely at ease, cleansed and relieved. He has succeeded in arranging for matters to turn out honourably. He perceives the future in glowing colours. Just a few more weeks and it will all be over. He will have done his duty and will know that it was not in vain. Pointless questions will no longer arise. Tahar will have the fair trial he deserves and one day soon, a day which will finally dawn, everything will be behind them and they will no longer be enemies. He opens the door of the cell in good spirits. Tahar looks up at him.
“It’s all arranged,” Capitaine Degorce announces as he sits down. “They’ll come to collect you tonight and tomorrow you’ll be handed over to stand trial in France.”
“Good,” says Tahar. “Tomorrow. And tonight, where will I spend tonight?”
“Away from here,” Capitaine Degorce replies. “In the charge of the officer I am to hand you over to, I suppose. At Saint-Eugène.”
Tahar closes his eyes.
“Tomorrow’s Friday,” he whispers. “I’m fortunate.”
“What do you mean?” asks Capitaine Degorce and the anxiety he thought was gone burns his chest again.
Tahar smiles sadly.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Capitaine Degorce is sitting less than six feet away from him, but he feels as if an infinite distance lay between them and it has always been thus. The hearts of men are such a mystery. This one’s heart is an even greater one. The capitaine would like to be able to wrest Tahar out of his solitude and draw him towards him, if only for moment, and he looks at him with an almost imploring goodwill.
(One day this war will be over and you and I will once again sit face to face in full sunlight, and we shall be able to talk, then, we shall be able to tell one another all that we have not had time to say here.)
“One day this war will be over, you’ll see,” says Capitaine Degorce.
“I know, capitaine,” says Tahar.
He has not re-opened his eyes. His features have slowly subsided and he looks very old. Shadows obscure his face where deep lines, that can be guessed at already, will form, lying in wait at the corners of his eyes, on his brow, in the hollows of his cheeks. And little by little the shadows fade away, the bitter line of the mouth slowly becomes a smile, cracks appear in the mask of old age and it silently breaks up. The eyes open, but the light shining in them remains indecipherable. All the things Capitaine Degorce would like to say seem to him empty and inappropriate.
“I shall come to fetch you,” he simply says before leaving the cell.
He goes out into the street to smoke a cigarette. The wind has dropped and a vast sun is setting slowly over the city. Grains of sand cling to the windows and the wire mesh. The air is laden with dust and humidity. Capitaine Degorce wonders how anyone can become attached to this city. If it possesses a secret charm, he finds it impossible to detect. He will leave it with no regrets. In the interrogation room Febvay sits on a table, eating a large apple, cutting it in pieces with a commando knife, from time to time directing furious glances at Robert Clément, who is handcuffed to a radiator. He spits the pips in his direction.
“Still nothing,” notes Capitaine Degorce.
“Nothing at all, mon capitaine.”
The capitaine kneels beside Clément.
“The nights here are not very pleasant, you know,” he confides. “And the worst of it is that you never get used to them. I’ve noticed that. Each night is worse than the last. They’re wrong to say you can get used to everything. Folk wisdom doesn’t amount to much, does it?”
Clément maintains a stubborn silence.
“Well, you’ll see for yourself. But it’s foolish. And utterly pointless, believe me. Don’t bring it upon yourself. Now I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, someone in your family, your mother perhaps, or your fiancée, is going to come here and ask for news of you. And do you know what I’m going to reply? No? I’m going to tell them we released you this afternoon and I’m very surprised she still has no news of you. I shall offer her all my sympathy and ask her not to fail to keep me informed. I shall appear anxious, very anxious. I know my anxiety is particularly contagious. And when she’s gone I’ll come and describe every detail of the scene to you. I shall leave nothing out, you can be sure of that. You may possibly listen to me with more of your splendid indifference, through pride or stupidity. And then there will be another night and you’ll think about all this again. You won’t be able to help thinking about it. You’ll realize that you no longer exist. You’ll think about the distress of your loved ones. They’re terrible, night thoughts. I’ve noticed that as well. I’m very observant. You’ll end up seeing things differently. You’ll tell me what I want to know, I’m sure of it.”
The capitaine studies Clément and leans closer to his ear.
“And if I’m wrong, and being mistaken really annoys me, which for your sake I hope won’t be the case, here’s what I may do. I’ll release you. I’ll take you to your work place and take my leave of you very warmly, I promise you. I’ll even embrace you and before that my men will have put the word round everywhere, in all the right circles, showering you with praise. They’ll talk about your enthusiasm for assisting the army of your beloved country, and the courage with which you have agreed to go under cover, you see. And your release will be followed by a wave of very public arrests. I’ll make sure of that. I don’t think you’ll have time to pack your bags.”
Capitaine Degorce gives Clément a couple of friendly pats on the shoulder.
“Do you know what your friends in the F.L.N. do to traitors? I’ve got some photographs if it interests you.”
Clément turns towards the capitaine and spits in his face. Febvay leaps to his feet.
“Leave him, Febvay.” Capitaine Degorce restrains him, wiping his face. “Leave him. This means that Monsieur Clément has already begun to think. Lock him up for the night. In solitary.”
(Filthy little shit.)
*
The sheets of paper are no longer blank. On each one of them he has written the date and “Dear Mother and Father,” “My dearest wife, my beloved children”, and even, “My dear Marcel”. And that is all. It is eleven o’clock and night has fallen. He has forced himself to eat something and sits there, pen in hand, turning his head every time there is the sound of an engine. He picks up the start of the letter intended for Marcel and tosses it into the waste paper basket with the feeling of having effectively solved a part of his problem. “Dear Mother and Father, look after your health, especially you, papa. Everything here is going as well as possible. Your son, André.” No point in rereading it. The thing to do is to put it into an envelope as quickly as possible and stop thinking about it. Words will come back. “My dearest wife, my beloved children, an extremely busy day prevents me from writing to you at length and only leaves me time to tell you that all’s going well and to send you my fondest love.” Outgoing mail. His mind is intact. He is capable of developing complex arguments and taking decisions. He can formulate and understand the givens of a problem, assess the relative importance of intelligence. He knows how to devise plans which call for the elaboration of middle-term and long-term conjectures. But naturally, when it comes to writing a letter to his nearest and dearest, something else is needed, something he has plainly lost. His soul, perhaps, the soul which brings words to life. He has left his soul behind somewhere along the way and he does not know where. Tomorrow he will have to resume this ordeal – writing, writing at least something, and he regrets not having kept copies of his letters, so that he could send them again, unchanged. But, in fact, that is virtually what he has been doing for weeks now. A copy would be quite pointless. He looks at the organization chart. When he has completed it he will be able to retrace his steps and retrieve his soul, wherever he has left it. For the time being what lies within him is a desert.
(And my thoughts are like graffiti on the walls of an empty room.)
Everything is silent. It is a fearful hour of the night. The daylight is fled and will not reappear for a long time. It is the hour when Christ’s heart was filled with anguish in the darkness of the garden of Gethsemane, the apostles had abandoned him into sleep, leaving him to his appalling solitude, and his heart is the frail heart of a man, terrified at the approach of death. He falls face downwards upon the ground, the leaves of the olive trees shiver in the wind and there is nothing to keep the bitter chalice at bay. It is the hour when the soldiers of the Sanhedrin are arming and the melancholy Procurator of Judaea paces the corridors of his silent palace, endlessly putting off the hour when he goes to bed. For him, too, this night is a night of anguish and he does not know why. He broods on the terrors of childhood and is devastated that they have returned to trouble the austere and serious man he has become. He has a taste of blood in his mouth and his soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. Capitaine Degorce switches off the light in his office and paces, in his turn, along interminable corridors, he walks slowly, without meeting anyone, and feels as if he were a prisoner in an endless labyrinth. In the end he finds Moreau.
“I’m going to lie down for a while. Wake me when Andreani arrives.”
In his room he picks up his Bible and sniffs the pages. The delicious scent of paper and glue calms him. He reads: “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungred and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick and in prison and ye visited me not.” Capitaine Degorce lies down, fully clothed, on his bed with his eyes open. It is this text that is an endless labyrinth. He gets up again. The corridors, once more, and the door of the cell and finally Tahar, who asks him, straightening up: “Is it time?”
“No,” replies Capitaine Degorce. “I have come to wait for it with you, if that does not disturb you. Let me stay with you, please,” he says again – and Tahar smiles at him.
I remember you, mon capitaine, and I can still see you in court walking towards the bench without even a glance at the dock where Paul Mattei and I were watching as you passed by. You were wearing all your decorations and the brand-new insignia of a lieutenant-colonel. They may have ended up making you a général, but don’t hold it against me, mon capitaine, if I stick with the rank you held as a young man, the only one you owed to your courage and not to your utter servility, a servility so great that even today I may well not have grasped the full extent of it. For I am stubborn, and the love I bore you has left such a deep trace in my heart that I have never been able to abandon the absurd hope of meeting you again, a hope that has been endlessly disappointed, of course, as it was in April 1961, when, right up to the last moment, I believed you would come over to us in support of the generals and l’Algérie française. You were only a commandant then, I had not seen you since the fighting at Wilaya 5, and even though I was already aware of that victory meaning nothing to you and of your being ready to allow yourself to be robbed of it to the benefit of Tahar’s friends, who had so little deserved it, I nevertheless believed you would not accept having shed all that blood for nothing, blood that victory alone could make sense of. Yes, mon capitaine, I am stubborn and I refused to see that deep down you were nothing more than a lackey, a faithful servant, grateful to his masters for the baubles with which they reward his base conduct, but you stayed put, you accepted the ignominy imposed on us, without turning a hair, like the other lackeys, our former brothers in arms, of whom we learned that, one after the other, they were defecting, despite all their solemn promises, and Paul Mattei said to me, Horace, it can’t end like this. No, mon capitaine, nothing could end like that, in a grotesque, final charade, neither that war, nor our revolt, for we refused to forget our promises, and we kept them, whatever the cost, by renouncing everything that had driven our lives up until then, that cowardly army, the nation of lackeys that had betrayed its own memory and shamefully turned a blind eye as Belkacem and his kin were being taken to the slaughterhouse, as if the blood of these men counted for nothing, and I could not prevent it, but I could keep my promises and show that blood had a price, an exorbitant price, one that had to be paid. At the opening of our trial Paul stood up and asked, of what am I to be absolved? after which he remained silent, but as for me, mon capitaine, I did not honour them with a single word, I left them to the virtue of their selective indignation, refusing to participate in any way in the proceedings of that masquerade, I did not even object when our counsel sought to subpoena you as a witness. Oh, maybe it was not solely on principle, after all, mon capitaine, that I made no objection, maybe I was still expecting something from you, for I am stubborn, or maybe a secret part of me, hidden in the depths of my heart, was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing you again, no-one can say, and I listened to you giving your evidence to the court, I heard you speaking in conventional terms about our exemplary conduct in Indochina, about the difficulties of service in Algeria and the exceptionally tragic circumstances that might perhaps mitigate the heinousness of our treason, and I was stunned for, except at the moment when you murmured some inept phrase or other about the difficulty of protecting one’s soul during that cruel war, you appeared to be reciting a prepared text, you stared rigidly in front of you, I clearly remember, and it was so evident that you were only there out of a sense of duty, our actions inspired so manifest a revulsion in you, that it may well have been your evidence that was the deciding factor in our being condemned to death. No, mon capitaine, I should not be surprised to learn it, but I do not hold it against you, death has been no stranger to me for a long time, as you well know, and it was the prospect of going on living in this fragile, ancient world, that seemed unfamiliar, almost daunting to me then, perhaps I was never able to do justice to life, something my little seminarist already used to deplore in the letters he wrote to me from the slopes of the Djurdjura mountains before an unknown F.L.N. zone chieftain decided to have him executed. Once calm was restored in the city, when our work at the villa in Saint-Eugène was finished, I did everything I could to avoid him being given a combat posting, even though he had made known his wish to remain with me, but he had done enough, it had not been his choice and he deserved peace. It is, of course, still painful to me that, in seeking to grant him peace, I set him on a course towards those who would murder him, but there were so many murderers about that they doubtless awaited him at the end of any one of the paths that might have taken him far away from the village in Kabylia where he was posted as a teacher. After three months I received his first letter, I clearly remember, this was probably the time it had taken him to emerge from the devastation the villa in Saint-Eugène had buried him in and he felt reborn, he wrote that he thought of me often, and that he would have liked me to be able to come and spend a few days with him, so as to understand what life could be, despite the poverty, despite the war, indeed the war seemed to be so far away, he went on to write, that he quite often left his M.A.T.49 rifle behind in the corner of the classroom where he had set it down that morning, and the children would come running after him to hand him back his gun as he was already walking back to his base, with his hands in his pockets, smiling at the sunset, as if he had finally become a carefree child like the others, and that is how I still picture him today. He thanked me for having given him this chance and commiserated with me, he said he was certain that it would one day be granted to me, too, to be reborn and that he would never go back to metropolitan France, even when the war was over, he would remain there with his children, he would be teaching them to write their names in fine rounded script, teach them to sing counting rhymes, to do the conga amid gleeful shouts along the lanes of the village and to twist together the endless supply of plastic scoubidou threads that his mother used to send him by post, and which the little girls would attach to their multicoloured necklaces amid laughter, he wrote me their names, but these have slipped my memory, Djeyda, Ghozlene, Dihya, and he repeated that he would never abandon them, he would continue to watch them marvelling at being photographed, as they sat on the school courtyard wall, the vivid colours of their best dresses glowing in the summer light, and he would never walk away from the smiles that both broke his heart and filled him with a love of life so indomitable that not even the memories of suffering and death that some-times kept him awake at night could tarnish its radiance. He had, of course, lost his faith in God, but the new faith that inspired him seemed enduring and he had no regrets. His pupils’ parents sometimes invited him to eat a modest vegetable couscous with them, or, on feast days, a roast boar, the unclean portion of which had been scrupulously removed, cursed and thrown into the fire, he would get back to the base later and later, with an ever more carefree tread and it was on his return from one of these meals, one night in 1959, that he got himself killed. The sous-lieutenant in command of the base only noticed his absence the following day and they found his mutilated body beside the road. His M.A.T.49 had vanished. If I had been in command of that base, mon capitaine, I should have arrested the whole of the family who had invited him to dinner, knowing he would be returning alone in the darkness, I should have had their hovel burned, but I did not even suggest this to that idiot of a sous-lieutenant and, in memory of my little seminarist, I settled for believing that all the smiles that had lit up his last weeks had been pure and sincere and I simply asked to be allowed to write the letter myself that had to be sent to his parents. This was contrary to normal practice, but the sous-lieutenant agreed at once – in fact I was relieving him of an unwelcome chore, all he would have been capable of doing would be stringing out the same set phrases which you yourself used at my trial, mon capitaine, exemplary conduct, tragic circumstances, all that nonsense, and his indifference would have sullied my memory of that boy, which mattered so much to me, yes, it mattered to me, and it was from you, mon capitaine, that I learned the need to employ the convoluted paths of untruth so as to preserve the memory of the dead and the essential truth of them, something infinitely more precious than the bald truth of facts. I gathered up his personal effects, letters, a little vocabulary in which he had begun noting words in Kabylian and their meanings, the black Christ wrapped in old newspaper and dozens of photographs he had taken in the village. I addressed the letter to his mother, I told her about the great affection I had for her son, who had served under me for a number of months, during the course of which I had come to appreciate his character and his unswerving moral rectitude, I spoke of the extremely important secretarial work he had carried out for me, but it was only in Kabylia, I wrote, that the mission entrusted to him had been in accord with his deepest aspirations and I assured her that he was happy, so happy that, even while he was aware of the threat that hung over him, he had not wanted to leave, and that perhaps she might find in this some comfort for her grief, I wrote that his death had been quick, that he had not suffered, I gave her my word for this, mon capitaine, I knew his body would be returned to her in a sealed coffin and she would never know what they had made him suffer that night and I wrote that all the children who had become his own were inconsolable, they would never forget him, they would join her in mourning her son, in that village she did not know on the slopes of the Djurdjura mountain range and this, at least, might be true. I finished by offering to visit her, if she wished, on my return to metropolitan France, but, of course, I never had the opportunity to do this, and I packed up all my little seminarist’s belongings, apart from the photograph of the little girls in the school courtyard, Massiva, Leïla and Thiziri, which I kept, as I had the right to do, since it was for me he had taken it, for me alone, and still today, when I look at it, I remember him, I remember him clearly, but I think of you too, my brother, mon capitaine, every time I meet those solemn eyes and smiles which it is forbidden to you, and to me, to fathom. I sent off the parcel and the letter and went back to Wilaya 5, where Colonel Lotfi’s katiba units were raiding our command posts before taking refuge beyond the frontier with Morocco. You ought to have been relieved at once more encountering war as you had always known it, mon capitaine, out in the open, against armed enemies who had finally hauled you out from the damp cellars of El-Biar, but one only needed to look at you for a moment to sense that you were not. Perhaps you had grasped that nothing could halt what had once been begun, and that even here, on the threshold of the Sahara, the only thing that mattered was obtaining intelligence. When one of our patrols was massacred near a village to the south of Béchar, I went into the village with my men where there were children crouched down chewing cat-mint with closed eyes, from time to time wiping away with their cuffs the green saliva that ran down their chins, a large dog with pointed ears, covered in flies, hung from the branch of a stunted tree, I clearly remember. I had all the villagers assembled and, in front of them all I fired a bullet into the head of the village headman, he fell on his side, his scarf unwound on the sand, a woman let out a cry, but the children did not stir, and I asked Belkacem to translate what I told the villagers. I told them they must give up hope of living, I told them they were all going to die and they had no choice between life and death, the only choice they had was at whose hand death came, at mine or that of the rebellion, and I told them I would return every time they gave intelligence to the F.L.N. and not me, I would return every time they gave food to one of the rebels, every time they gave him a drink of water from their well, even a single drop, I would return, they would learn to know me and when they knew me, the only thing they would wish would be for death not to come to them from me. Did I tell you how I obtained the intelligence that enabled us to set that ambush between Taghit and Béhar in 1960? Did I tell you, mon capitaine? I do not think so, but I had no need to tell you, is that not so, for you knew very well, even if you preferred not to be told. It was night. The crescent moon was shining in a starry sky and just beside the long desert road a little dromedary was being suckled by its mother, on trembling, spindly legs. You had the machine guns set up just at the top of a slope and when the men of the katiba appeared you gave the command to open fire. The group under my command caught them from the rear as they tried to escape and we took about ten prisoners. I asked them who their officer was, they pointed to a corpse and I made them kneel beside the road. They did not beg, they did not ask questions. No doubt they knew this was the best thing that could happen to them. They fell forward, face downwards in the sand. I heard the little dromedary uttering piteous cries. Its mother had been hit by a burst of gunfire and it was straining towards the great motionless body, trying to reach the teats so as to go on sucking, but it could not manage to do so and it raised its long neck towards the moon, squealing. I had it shot as well. I did not want to leave it to starve to death. When I caught up with you, you asked me how many prisoners we had and I replied that we had no prisoners. I added that we needed the officer’s body and you dismissed me with a gesture, looking the other way, as if the only thing that mattered to you was to leave me in no doubt of your contempt. But the truth is that it was I who held you in contempt, mon capitaine, that night more than ever. The next day I went back to the village with the body of the A.L.N. officer, I threw it down at the centre of the village in front of the assembled villagers and told them that the person who had threatened them was dead, and all his men with him, but that I was alive and that only living people were to be feared. They went up to the body, they looked at his face and I swear to you, mon capitaine, that for a brief moment, despite their terror and despair, I sensed their gratitude. I needed their terror and despair, I needed it so that we could achieve the victory of which we were robbed, with your shameful connivance, and for which all those people would have been eternally grateful. I have not forgotten them, you know, and when, years later, outside the Hôtel Saint-George, the taxi driver asked me where my family home was, I named that village to the south of Béchar and he told me he had not realized it was so far away and he could not take me there, not on account of the distance, he had driven longer distances before then, he could have taken me down to the south for several days and would have quoted a price, but on account of the danger. There were a lot of dummy road blocks and he told me that it was just close to that village of mine that a whole wedding party on its way to Taghit had had their throats cut, even the musicians, did I know? and I told him, yes I did know, I knew the road very well where it had happened. It may well have been at the very spot where our machine guns had decimated the katiba that they set up their dummy road block, waiting there in their stolen uniforms, and the bride, who was called Zohra, Hayet or Sabah, I simply cannot remember, would have been thinking that this interminable police inspection was going to delay the celebration and the moment of intimacy, and the people went on singing, mon capitaine, they were singing, I love you, Sara, let me live in your heart, and the bride noticed that the policemen were not wearing regulation shoes, the cars slowed down, all eyes were focused on the non-matching shoes and someone screamed while a single voice finished singing, I’d die for you, Sara, and they all knew they were never going to reach Taghit and would never be able to sit down in the shade of the tent erected for them beside the palm grove, at the foot of the earth walls, the bride pressed close to her husband who put his hand on her sterile belly, her old maid’s belly, that would never be put to use, and they were made to get out of the cars decorated with white ribbons, the weather was so dry that their blood dried almost instantly and the desert wind set a darbouka drum rolling in the dust, it caused the satin robes to billow, sent torn lace flying and carried fine pink grains of sand towards the sea. The taxi driver sadly remarked that there was no end to the way life kept on turning ugly and then began to smile as he pointed out that the sky had darkened, here we have all four seasons on the same day, you see? and I said I know, in one way this is my country too, but he grew sad again and murmured, no, monsieur, this is no longer a country, a country of men, it’s a slaughterhouse and a prison and what we are is sacrificial lambs, he told me how his daughter of twelve had started wetting her bed every night, she woke herself up crying and was soaked in piss, as if she were not twelve but three, or even two, and the glittering eyes of wolves had come back to lie in wait for her in the darkness, the night was once more filled with wolves and monsters, she could feel their hot breath in the darkness of her nightmares, and she woke up crying out, with the bitter stench of piss in her nostrils, she frightened her little brothers who started crying out as well, and there was nothing to be done, in vain did they cajole her or scold her, tell her she was no longer a child, every night she began again, even smacking her would have been useless and he could not strike his daughter because he loved her and understood her terror, so he would hold her in his arms, all thin and stinking, until she went to sleep again. And he said, you’re lucky to have gone away, monsieur, but, as you can see, it’s started to rain and in an hour’s time there will be sun. I made no reply and thought about my little seminarist, I wondered whether his new faith in the power of life would have survived, and for how long, or whether he would finally have realized that children’s smiles mean nothing and that it is we, mon capitaine, who are right not to understand this, and I remembered that the paths of untruth sometimes lead to the truth, as you taught me, for I was certain now that, as I had written to his mother, even if he had foreseen his death, he would not have wanted to leave. This is how truth is born from lies, the little seminarist accepted his death and Capitaine Lestrade was a hero, why should they be pitied? But you, mon capitaine, you have had to continue to live, like a lackey, clinging to principles you no longer had the strength to believe in, I realized this that night on the road to Taghit, I remember it clearly, you were staring at the moon as if you were alone in the world and no longer even had the strength to rejoice at your own victories, even your contempt was a sign of weakness. I really must have loved you, not to have understood at that moment that nothing had any importance in your eyes any longer, not even your own petty self, to which you were nevertheless so attached, and if I had understood what you had become, I should never have hoped for your support in 1961 and your pathetic evidence at our trial would not have surprised and hurt me to such an extent, as you have hurt me so many times before, without even being aware of it. It is very hard to resign oneself to living, as I well know, I have known it for such a long time, mon capitaine, and I forbade my counsel to go to the Court of Appeal, I did not want to wait any longer, I did not want to hear any more speeches, I did not want to have to bear my parents’ devastated faces in the visitors’ room at Fresnes prison any longer, nor Paul Mattei’s sister’s tears, and I hoped all that would not last, but Salan saved his own skin and I realized they were not going to execute us. The night that followed the announcement of our reprieve Paul tried to kill himself, but they rescued him, they did not even allow him to choose his own death, and when I saw him after he came out of hospital, he said to me, what a farce, Horace, what a farce and what humiliation, I replied, yes, and embraced him. In 1968 we were released and returned home. I had never been back to my village since my return from Indochina, but I still had my house there and a plot in the cemetery. I spent years without speaking a word to the militant communists I had played with during my childhood and they eyed me as if I were the devil. But everything is so weightless, mon capitaine, everything is forgotten so rapidly, hatred turns cold and that coldness fades and we used to get together to play cards in the village bar, in a corner by the fire in winter and under the vine in summer, until we all grew old. I stopped telephoning Paul because we no longer had anything to say to one another, but I never gave up hope of meeting you again, one day, perhaps by chance, I no longer remembered the name of your wife’s village and in any case I should not have made the trip there, but I was endlessly expecting to run into you, perhaps shopping in the town, on a street corner, and I knew I should recognize you, for I had already glimpsed the face of the old man you have become, I saw it appear for a moment on that morning in spring 1957, and I remember it clearly. I do not know why I was so eager to see you again, perhaps to settle an old debt which I had allowed to lapse for all these years – for I owe you something, mon capitaine, and have done for a long time, something I no longer want to keep to myself. We had prepared everything, you know, while you were dreaming your daydreams. We had fixed a hook to the ceiling down in the cellar and fastened a rope to it. Whatever you may think, mon capitaine, I do not particularly like causing suffering, I settle for doing what has to be done and doing it well. As we were driving towards Saint-Eugène, Tahar said nothing. Seated between the seminarist and Belkacem, who was whistling his song, he stared at his manacled hands. When we reached the villa he saw the rope and the chair and did not look surprised. If I could have killed him without his being aware of anything I would have done so, but that was not possible, and I, too, would like to do him justice on this point, mon capitaine, it is true that he was brave, even though this is utterly unimportant. For a moment I was afraid the absurd notion would occur to him of making a speech to us or uttering a historic pronouncement, but he did not do it, he understood the situation and knew it was not the moment to indulge in any kind of ridiculous childishness. But there is one thing he did say, however, yes, he did say something and I owe you the truth. He turned to me and asked, will you pass on a message from me to Capitaine Degorce? and I looked at him and replied no. He was immediately lifted onto the chair to put the rope around his neck, I kicked away the chair and Belkacem put his arms round his waist and hung onto him. The little seminarist remained standing close to the door and turned his head away. Everything was over very quickly. Perhaps I should have heard his message, perhaps I should at least have told you the following morning that he had wanted to say something to you, of which neither you nor I will ever have an inkling, but I could not bring myself to do it, mon capitaine, you treated me like a dog and I had no desire to relieve your suffering, unless, perhaps, it was that I did not want to make you suffer anymore. I could have continued to leave all this buried for ever in the depths of a cellar in Saint-Eugène, but I am stubbornly loyal and the truth is that nothing is buried, I remember everything, I remember it clearly, and have carried everything around with me, the living as well as the dead, which was why I had to go back there, the pitiless land of my childhood having become daily more foreign to me, and I was not lying to the taxi driver when I told him his country was also mine, precisely because it is no longer a country and no country exists for men like me, or like you, mon capitaine. The day before I left I invited the taxi driver to dine with me in the restaurant at the HÔtel Saint-George where, of course, he had never set foot. We drank a digestif under the jasmine and he cast uneasy glances at the waiters, as if he were expecting to be thrown out at any moment. The following day, before taking me to the airport which bears the name of one of our enemies, he took me to take tea with him at his home in a public housing unit in Bab-el-Oued. His living room was crowded with plastic cans filled with water, on which his daughter set down the tea and plates piled high with little pastries that came from a patisserie where he must have paid a fortune for them. The taxi driver’s wife was nursing a crying baby. His daughter sat opposite me and looked at me, smiling, with the same serious and solemn look I had so often encountered in that photograph, taken long ago, one summer morning in Kabylia. I did not ask her her name. When I left she stood up to kiss me. She smelled of eau de cologne. And we drove to the airport, mon capitaine. I knew I would never go back. I shook the taxi driver’s hand and I left behind the El-Harrach rubbish tip, the coastal road to Saint-Eugène, the collapsed houses of the Casbah, the wolves’ eyes glittering in the darkness and all those children smiling without knowing why, and very far to the south, on the long desert road of our cruel youth, the shade of a nameless bride awaiting her wedding night between Taghit and Béchar.