His perfect poise is an intolerable insult. The left foot positioned to the rear, resting on the heel, enables the body to pivot gracefully in a single fluid movement. The back is impeccably straight, the shoulder blades project like knives, the back of the neck, close cropped beneath the line of the beret, and Capitaine Degorce would like to empty the magazine of his automatic pistol into this detested neck. But it is too late and he remains seated behind his desk, shaking with humiliation and despair. The previous night there had still been time, but the previous night he was so naive. He had walked slowly alongside Tahar past the soldiers who, on Adjudant-chef Moreau’s orders, had just presented arms to him and was so completely filled with the delightful feeling of a duty done that he had not even reacted when Lieutenant Andreani allowed himself to murmur with a sad toss of his head, “Oh! André! My God … André …” It seemed to him that nothing this man thought could affect him, but that was the moment when he should have taken his pistol from its holster and shot them all down like mad dogs, Horace Andreani, his little weasel of a seminarist and Belkacem. But he did nothing, did not think of it even for a moment, of course, because his eyes were firmly fixed on Tahar as Belkacem thrust him brutally into the car, muttering something in Arabic, and he would have liked Tahar to look back at him one last time and smile at him, but he did not do so and Capitaine Degorce simply mused that this was not how they should have taken their leave of one another, even if they were due to meet again sometime in the full light of day. And now it is forever too late. At the moment when a rope was being put around Tahar’s neck Degorce had been enjoying the most peaceful sleep that had been granted him for a long time, nor was he woken by his convulsive death throes. In the morning he drank his coffee and smoked calmly before the open window without knowing that he had become complicit in a crime it would never be possible for him to atone for.
(You took him from me, Andreani, you took him from me.)
How could he ever atone for his naivety, his abysmal stupidity, the utter inanity of his optimistic presumptions? He had failed to take on board that brazen impudence now reigns supreme, and a lie no longer needs to clothe itself in the attire of plausibility, it suffices to proclaim, with a complicit wink of an eye, “Tarik Hadj Nacer has committed suicide in his cell,” in contempt of all the evidence, and with all the more indifference over being believed because the abject fear that has taken hold of men has finally caused them to love untruth, oh yes, they love it and long for it with all the strength of their slavish souls, but if the most shameless and cool cynicism is also added to this, their adoration knows no bounds and Capitaine Degorce has taken nothing on board, seen nothing, understood nothing: all he is left with is the wretched consolation of not having intended this to happen.
(But that’s the fault, not the excuse. The fault.)
He would like to telephone the colonel and tell him he is nothing but a base murderer, but he cannot because he, too, is a murderer. He knows one thing for certain: what counts is what he has done, not what he intended and he paces along the corridors, the electric light hurts his eyes, his legs are heavy, and when he finds Moreau he takes his arm and says to him very softly, looking him in the eye: “He’s gone, Moreau. They took him from me.”
(I handed him over, it was me.)
“Now then, mon capitaine,” says Moreau, swiftly leading him into the kitchen. “Come in here and sit down. Do you want some water?”
Capitaine Degorce lets himself sink onto a chair.
“You know, don’t you? You know what they’ve done?”
“Yes, mon capitaine. Everyone knows.”
Capitaine Degorce passes a hand over his face. He calms down.
“It’s not the way, Moreau,” he says sadly. “No, it’s not the way for us to be fighting a war. Not us.”
“This war’s a filthy business, mon capitaine,” Moreau replies genially. “You know that as well as me.”
“Maybe I didn’t know.”
The adjudant-chef offers him a glass of water. He refuses it with a gesture.
“Order me a vehicle.”
*
The driver sets him down in front of Notre-Dame d’Afrique. Throughout the journey he has been imagining the coolness of the basilica, the smells of incense and the damp wood of the confessional and the attentive presence of the priest, on the other side of the grille, but he remains standing on the cathedral steps, his beret in his hand, he sees the figure of Christ on the cross behind the altar, the votive tablets, old ladies nod to him in greeting and he cannot move another inch forward. He has the feeling that if he takes a step forward an invisible hand will drive him away, that the host will burn his mouth like acid. God wants no truck with him. He puts his beret on again and walks further along the square. A light mist hangs over the sea and he hears the sound of the waves breaking against the rocks at Saint-Eugène lower down. All he has failed to achieve can never come to fruition now and he suffers a terrible grief from this. In the distance, in the fiercely barricaded Casbah the muezzin is giving the call to the great Friday prayers, when vast paradises are opened up to the souls of martyrs, and this is what the good fortune Tahar spoke of amounts to, knowing well that he was to die, Capitaine Degorce understands this only now at this moment, and is distressed to think that, knowing it, Tahar had not turned to smile at him one last time. But why should he have smiled at the man who was handing him over to his executioners?
(I did not know, Lord, I did not know.)
“Take me back to El-Biar.”
The vehicle drives along the sunlit streets and again he pictures himself the night before, sitting close to Tahar, but this time he does not remain unmoving, he gets up without a word, undoes his bonds and takes him by the arm, leads him through the labyrinth of silent corridors to the door open upon a night lit by a slender crescent moon, gently he pushes Tahar towards the brilliance of the moon before closing the door and savouring a new-found peace. He could have done that several hours ago, he could have done it: that is how Pilate, the Procurator of Judaea, must have mused, when the storm of the crucifixion was already rending the Jerusalem sky.
(And I crave untruth myself, I revel in it. No, oh no, I wouldn’t have done it, even if I’d known. I wouldn’t have done it. I have the power, and power crushes me, I can do nothing. I have no right to demand explanations. I don’t even have a right to regrets.)
In his office he looks at the photograph of Tahar on the organization chart, he has an impulse to murmur words to excuse himself, but the obscenity of this repels him and his lips remain closed. It is too late. Everything has been said. He picks up his mail. There is only a single letter this morning, from Jeanne-Marie, and he knows he will not be able to open it. He tears it up and tosses the pieces into the waste paper basket. Any word of tenderness would be intolerable. Gilded clouds pass in the sky and he follows them with his eyes through the window. He has the feeling that these are all the happy memories of his life which he has just torn into pieces, as if he had become a man for whom even happy memories are now forbidden and he subsides under the weight of an appalling nostalgia. The rocky pinnacles of Piana tower up in the setting sun and Claudie is playing with Jacques on the terrace of the hotel, but a sickly yellow discolours the sky, even creeping into his memory and he will never again recover its luminous clarity.
(I am a fog, a sickly sweet rottenness that pervades everything. I am the one corrupting the colours of the creation. I secrete my poison into the world and beauty turns away from me.)
He used to love beauty so much, with such a fervent love – the sombre beauty of ritual language, the dazzling beauty of mathematics that illuminated his years of study. After two weeks of lessons Charles Lézieux had asked him to take a walk with him after school and told him, while they walked beside the river Doubs, and as if he were almost vexed to have to make this admission, that he was exceptionally talented. And he was. Success cost him no effort, as if he had developed a specific sense, an infallible geometrical intuition which the great majority of his fellow pupils lacked and which enabled him to perceive at once, in a clear light, what the others could only discover after long periods of laborious calculation. For him proofs only confirmed what he had already sensed in advance and he always took the trouble to make them extremely elegant, pure, concise and luminous, for he knew that truth and beauty should be revealed together and that one without the other is worthless. Mathematics opened up an eternal, unchanging, infinite world, without it being necessary to wait for the Day of Judgement. He possessed the key to this world which brought him closer to God and he thought that a life spent exploring it would be perfect. The Grandes Ecoles for engineers did not interest him, to the great satisfaction of Lézieux, who shared his contempt for everything that was basely practical and told him, as they walked side by side, that he was certain he would see him gaining admission to the Ecole Normale Supérieure. But eternity is not sheltered from the world’s suffering. The war continued and André Degorce had an increasingly urgent feeling that his blissfully blind existence was a sin. Something evil had spread abroad and this thing, not content with suppressing life, also had to make it shameful and dirty: soon there would be no pathway leading up towards infinite beauty and the souls of men would wither so utterly that they would no longer even be able to regret this. For weeks he had been talking to Lézieux about his desire to make himself useful, but the latter would invariably deflect the conversation to the works of Cantor or the theory of Hilbert spaces, until the day came when he replied that he could give André an opportunity to be useful. The Allies had landed in Normandy and Lézieux doubtless believed his pupil would soon be safe from reprisals. Less than a month later, just before the door to the flat where they were due to meet was broken down, the rapid clatter of footsteps on the staircase froze André’s heart and, on his return from Buchenwald, a life dedicated to mathematics had ceased to be conceivable. He had never felt he had a warlike temperament, discipline did not appeal to him and he had no taste for action, but a military career imposed itself upon him as an absolute necessity. The possibility of beauty must be preserved, that was all that mattered, even though he himself must turn away from it and renounce the enjoyment of it.
(And that’s what I’ve done with my life.)
Today he is the one who comes running up the staircase and the sound of his malevolent footsteps perpetuates the terror and death he had intended to fight. He has brought into the world all that he intended to banish from it. None of the goals he once pursued can absolve him of this. It is impossible to understand what has happened. He has lost everything. His only contact with mathematics comes down to the sordid statistical calculations which pepper his confidential reports. He has spoiled everything that was offered to him, exhausted God’s mercy and his soul lies somewhere, very far behind him.
*
Robert Clément looks terrible. He cannot have been able to get a wink of sleep all night. His eyes are sunken and gleaming. A little acne spot has appeared at the corner of his mouth, just under his moustache. His breathing is very heavy. Capitaine Degorce is surprised that just one night should have put him in such a state. He knows he will talk soon. He squats beside him.
“You see, the nights are difficult,” he says and his tone is exactly the same as the previous day, serene and courteous, as if nothing had happened. “Suppose we put an end to all this?”
“I’ve nothing to say to you,” Clément replies. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
“I’ve no idea!” says Capitaine Degorce in surprise. “You can tell me as often as you like! I know it’s not true, that’s the only thing that matters.”
He turns to Moreau and Febvay. “Our friend doesn’t look too good, does he? It’s really stupid to be as stubborn as this, don’t you agree?”
“Agreed, mon capitaine, it’s bloody stupid.”
The harkis agree in a similar vein.
“Do you hear, Monsieur Clément? Your attitude produces unanimity it seems. Don’t you understand that you’re going to get tired before we do?”
Clément looks down for a moment before signalling to Capitaine Degorce, who leans towards him. Clément spits in his face again.
“I shan’t get tired. Not as long as I can spit in the face of a fascist bastard like you.”
Capitaine Degorce was mistaken. What he took for weariness and despair was simply hatred, a terrible hatred further nourished by a night of solitude and sleeplessness. He wipes his face with a handkerchief and goes to fetch a glass of water. His heart is beating fast. The word “fascist” is intolerable. He thinks again of Tahar, he pictures his cold corpse, the terrible rictus from the hanging, while Clément is alive and staring at him arrogantly, Clément, a usurper of sufferings that are not his own, who imagines his treason makes him a hero. Clément’s mind is a monolith, an impregnable citadel protected by walls of certainty. He will not talk.
(Son of a bitch.)
The sound of the glass breaking makes the soldiers start. Capitaine Degorce has flung it against the wall without saying a word and moves towards Clément, seizing him by the collar before giving him a headbutt. The capitaine unties him from his chair and throws him across the table, he bangs his head against the solid wood several times, Clément begins groaning, blood flows from his broken nose, the capitaine rips the buttons off his trousers and begins to slide them down his legs. Clément tries to defend himself, he lashes out violently, heaving his back off the table, but the capitaine thrusts his elbow into his stomach, leaning on it with all his weight, and Clément begins to vomit. A harki holds his shoulders down on the table while Capitaine Degorce finishes removing his trousers and rips his underpants. Then he puts his hands under Clément’s legs and bends his legs back onto his chest in the position of a baby being changed.
“Febvay, your knife. Hold his legs.”
With one hand Capitaine Degorce grabs Clément’s genitals and presses them back onto his belly. He holds the ice cold point of the knife against his anus. Clément utters a brief piercing cry. The capitaine pushes the blade in half a centimetre until a thin trickle of warm blood runs down between his white buttocks. Clément howls.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, do you understand?” the capitaine says in a hoarse, rasping voice. “There’s nothing wrong with you, you filthy swine. You just need to relax because if you don’t, you’ll do yourself an injury. Can you relax, do you think? Relax!”
Somewhere invisible dykes have been swept away by the fury of a fierce torrent, welling up from a bottomless abyss, the torrent is in spate, nothing can stop it, it sweeps away the grief, the tormenting doubts, and Capitaine Degorce surrenders himself to the delights of the power racing through him and setting him free, a veil has fallen from his eyes, he feels his heart beating fit to burst in every part of his awakened body, at the corners of his mouth, in his belly, in his fingertips, in the palm of the hand holding the quivering dagger, and he leans over Clément to inhale the sweet, heady smell of his fear. The hatred has vanished. At one blow Capitaine Degorce has robbed him of the hatred that animated him and caused him to hold up and now he spits back in Clément’s face and with unspeakable pleasure watches him caving in.
“Relax,” he whispers softly. “Relax.”
Clément tries to control his breathing and the involuntary contractions of his muscles. He closes his eyes with a groan. His limbs shake.
Clément is still. Tears flow from his eyelids and he sniffs noisily.
“I don’t know what state you’ll be in by the end of this interrogation. That depends on you. I’m going to ask you some questions. Not many. If you don’t answer, or if you give me an answer I don’t like, I shall push the knife in a little further, do you understand? I shall push it in like this.”
He thrusts the blade in an extra half-centimetre. Clément opens his eyes wildly and begins emitting piercing yells, his body contracts and he howls still louder. The harki leans on his shoulders and Febvay is almost stretched out across his legs.
“There, there, there …”
A gentle lullaby. Febvay has his eyes half closed. The pink tip of his tongue shows between his lips.
“I want you to understand that I’m no longer joking,” says Capitaine Degorce when Clément has again gained control of himself. “Begin now.”
Clément gives names. Two Algerians and two French communist militants, a garage mechanic and a teacher. Capitaine Degorce removes the dagger and holds it close to Clément’s eyes.
“A centimetre, you see, barely a centimetre. You’re not worth anything, really, are you? Nothing at all. You’d have done better to listen to me. It’s so easy to set things to rights, you see.”
He turns to Moreau.
“Go and find those men, Moreau. And make them talk to me. The Frenchmen as well as the others. More than the others, the swine. Understood? I don’t care about the publicity. And don’t forget to let them know who gave us their names.”
Clément sobs. Capitaine Degorce observes him with disgust. And he recognizes the same disgust in Febvay’s eyes and Moreau’s and those of the harkis, as well as admiration, the shifty gleam of connivance. There is saliva on the table and blood. Clément has turned on his side, his head cradled in his arms. His shrivelled penis dangles idiotically towards the table beneath the tuft of pubic hair. His thin legs, speckled with russet hairs, tremble convulsively. His feet are very white and delicate, the feet of a girl, but the nails are too long, irregular, and one of his little toes is dark, almost black. The storm has passed. All that remains is the ruins of a wasted landscape, and, amid the ruins, Clément’s body, this mysterious and repellent victim’s body. Capitaine Degorce feels nauseous.
“Show them how to live, Moreau,” he nonetheless remarks.
*
He has completed the organization chart, spoken on the telephone to the colonel and acquiesced respectfully in all his lies. All desire for revolt has left him. He is resigned to his infamy and he only wants one thing now: to be finished as quickly as possible with the mission that keeps him here. He has no idea what awaits him after this, but it is all a matter of indifference. He paces along the corridors, goes from one interrogation room to another, his eyes hardly settle on the faces of the Arabs, and those of the garage mechanic and the teacher, their expressions do not count, they mean nothing. These faces are theatrical masks and pain will cause them to shatter in pieces. A long lament arises somewhere in the building.
“Tahar, ia Tahar!”
Another voice responds: “Tahar, ia Tahar! Allah irahmek!”
Another voice calls out in turn: “Allah irham ech-chuhada!”
“What are they saying?” Capitaine Degorce asks.
“They know about Hadj Nacer,” replies a harki. “They’re saying that his soul is with God.”
“How do they know?”
Moreau spreads his hands in a helpless gesture.
“Make them be quiet,” orders Capitaine Degorce. “I don’t want to hear them anymore.”
He steps aside to smoke a cigarette. First there is a clatter of doors opening, one after the other, then shouting and finally silence. There is no end to the afternoon. The wind drives a winter sky before it, laden with rain. The sun dries the wet pavements. And it is the same monotony, the same emptiness. The essential truth has been revealed and nothing new will happen. On all fours in his office he retrieves the torn fragments of the letter from Jeanne-Marie out of the depths of the wastepaper basket. Patiently he tries to piece it together and when he has finished dusk has fallen. He does not know if this was only a way of passing the time or if he is incapable of resigning himself to solitude. The words that bring him pain help him to feel alive.
“My child, my beloved, André, no news today. I don’t feel like talking to you about the children and the petty aspects of our life far away from you. It’s night and you’re so very far away. If I didn’t know you I could believe that you no longer love us. Your letters are so short and so cold. But I know you, I know the purity of your soul, your honesty, and I cannot believe it. So I know you are suffering and don’t want to talk about it.”
(But I no longer have a soul.)
A tear in the paper makes the start of the next sentence illegible.
“… for everything that torments you. And so I shall wait for the time it takes and you will share your pain with me. I’m almost an old woman, but there’s nothing I could not hear from you, that’s the advantage of being married to an older woman! If you want to continue carrying a burden that is too heavy for you all on your own, André, then do so if you must, but don’t forget that I’m here to carry my share of it and that you can speak to me whenever you want to. Distance makes everything more difficult, my child, but I’m certain that when you’re close to me it will be easy for you to talk and I know, too, that you’ll need to do so. In the meantime please at least tell me I’m not mistaken. I know I’m not mistaken, but I should like you to write and tell me this, without any specifics, if you like, but write and tell me, for I’m going through some difficult nights. Oh, I’m not reproaching you, André, I’m asking you a favour. And I’ll go on talking to you about peaches and the marvellous spring we’re having here, I’ll give you all the details, the scent of the maquis, now the flowers are out, the children’s games, their whims, when they’re being naughty little things, and their sweetness and our family outings. I shall go on so you may know we’re all here, and there’s a place for you forever in our hearts where nothing has changed. I shall ask nothing more of you and I’ll expect you will be ready to …”
“Mon capitaine, you must come at once.”
*
Robert Clément is lying on his side on the floor of his cell, the lower part of his naked body wrapped in a military blanket. His arms are pressed against his chest, black with dried blood. There is blood on the tiled floor, all around him a vast pool spreading towards the walls and disappearing beneath the straw mattress. One foot sticks out from the blanket and its milky whiteness is like a patch of light in the darkness. Adjudant-chef Moreau soaks a sponge in a bucket of water and gently wipes Clément’s arms, on which the furrows of deep, jagged cuts appear where the pallid skin is torn. Capitaine Degorce crouches beside Moreau and takes the sponge from him. He squeezes it to expel all the blood and rinses it until the water that trickles out of it is perfectly clear and pure. He turns Clément onto his back and delicately raises his head, which sticks to the floor because of the blood. He runs the sponge over the face, the hair, the open eyes that are reluctant to close. The acne spot is still there, beneath the ridiculous moustache. His tightly closed lips are almost blue.
“How did he do that?” asks Capitaine Degorce.
“I’ve no idea, mon capitaine,” Moreau says. “I don’t understand.”
Close to the body, stuck fast in the blood, a soldier finds a curved piece of plastic, about ten centimetres long and crudely sharpened, which he hands to Capitaine Degorce. Clément must have spent a long time rubbing it against the walls of his cell. In one sense his resolution had held firm. It had just been totally concentrated on a different objective.
“Where did he find that? What is it?”
“I’ve no idea, mon capitaine,” repeats Moreau.
“It looks like a bit of the seat from the shithouse, mon capitaine,” observes a soldier. “Do you want me to check?”
The capitaine silently shakes his head.
“I don’t know when we screwed up, mon capitaine,” says Moreau in a stricken voice.
“I don’t hold it against you, Moreau,” says the capitaine. “We’ve all screwed up, as you say, and I don’t think it’s important to know when.”
Capitaine Degorce makes another vain attempt to close Clément’s eyes. He straightens up slowly. He studies his bloodied shoes which make a sucking noise as he raises them from the floor.
“Clean the cell for me,” he says. “And finish washing the boy.”
He looks at Clément again, the milky whiteness of his skin, his open eyes that no longer see anything.
“Come with me, Moreau.”
In his office he places a file on top of the torn-up letter from Jeanne-Marie.
“Robert Clément was released this morning after being questioned,” he says to Moreau, carefully articulating each word. “Tonight you will take his body and make it disappear, I don’t want to know how. I just want to be certain it will never be found. Understood?”
“Yes, mon capitaine,” Moreau agrees. “But you know,” he says after a while. “No-one will ever believe he was released and vanished like that into thin air.”
The capitaine shrugs.
“What does it matter, Moreau, what people believe or not? What does it matter?”
Capitaine Degorce lowers his head and massages his brow with his fingertips. “And now leave me alone, please.”
*
Within every man the memory of all humanity is perpetuated. And as for the immensity of all that there is to know, each one of us knows it already. That is why there will be no forgiveness. Capitaine Degorce has gone to find the Bible in his bedroom. He strokes its worn cover. There is a terrible sentence somewhere in the Gospel of St John that he needs to read and he reads: “But Jesus did not commit himself unto them because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.” He takes a sheet of paper and stares at the blank page without writing anything.
(A voice has returned to me, Jeanne-Marie, but what can I do with it? For a long time I’ve been a prey to lies. I know what there is in man, I’ve seen it so many times and have never spoken of it. That’s how I have gone on living. All I ever wrote to the families of all my comrades who died at my side in the prison camp was a web of lies. I spoke of courage, of sacrifice, of pride. I should have told them: your husband died because of me, your brother died because of me, or your son. I couldn’t save them. I didn’t want to. They died because they saw men accepting to live like insects, men like me. They died because they couldn’t bring themselves to do this and because, when they looked at us, myself and my fellow men, they asked themselves, what’s the point of living? Where we were, Jeanne-Marie, no-one could ask such a question and survive. Of course, there’s someone who has a place in your loving heart, Jeanne-Marie, and also the hearts of the children, but it is not me. As for me I have no dwelling, not even in hell. As they reach out to you my arms ought to disintegrate into ashes. The pages of the holy Book ought to burn my eyes. If you could see what I am you would shield your face and Claudie would turn away from me in horror. That’s how it is. Something wells up in man, something hideous, which is not human, and yet it is the essence of man, his profound truth. All the rest is merely lies. Spring is a lie, Jeanne-Marie, the sky is not blue and this very day I have killed a child and killed my brother. Undeserved love burdens us with a deadly weight. How could I tell you these things? A voice has returned to me for silence and for the night. A voice has returned to me for the dead who can no longer hear it.)
“Mon capitaine, Andreani’s men are here.”
“Tell Moreau to take charge of handing over the prisoners. I’m busy. Give him the list.”
Through the window he looks at the crescent of the moon, shining in a sky filled with stars. He feels as if he were performing an ageless ritual. In Jerusalem the storm of the crucifixion has passed and on the terrace of his palace the Procurator of Judaea raises his eyes clouded with longing towards the same moon. The heavy stone of the tomb has closed on the bodies of the execution victims and the silence of the night no longer makes them afraid.
(How many faces does He have, Jeanne-Marie? Does He take pleasure in not being recognized so that we should go astray and turn away from Him while believing we are seeking Him? Is He evil? Does He rejoice to see us fall? Is it thus that He repays us for our weakness and our love? His body is ugly. No majesty emanates from it. He does not shine. His wounds are appalling and do not inspire compassion. He looks like a criminal broken by justice. No-one weeps over Him. Those who cannot hold back their tears on seeing Him are saved, but no-one weeps. You can see, I am not weeping. Implacable logic strengthens my mind and logic is useless to me, it turns inside out like a glove and all the countless reasons that caused me to accept His being tortured and to raise my hand against Him are as insubstantial as mist. And I raised my hand against Him, Jeanne-Marie, several times, and I did not recognize Him, power and logic armed my hand, gave it its strength, but this hand has fallen back, powerless and dead and I cannot now cause it never to have been raised. But He, Jeanne-Marie, He who can do everything. Could not He cause it never to have been raised? Could not He cause me to have repudiated my mind’s logic and not Him? For now I have learned and I know. If it were given to me to encounter Him again I should recognize Him, whatever His face were like, I should recognize Him and I should know what to do. For I have also learned that evil is not the opposite of good: the frontiers between good and evil are confused, they blend into one another and become impossible to tell apart in the bleak grey light that covers everything and that is what evil is. And I have learned that the mind’s desiccated logic can achieve nothing without the help of the soul, it can only stray endlessly in the grey fog, lost between good and evil, and I, Jeanne-Marie, have left my soul somewhere behind me, I can remember neither where nor when. And what would be the point of my knowing if He does not allow me to retrace my steps? And what is there for me to do other than continue pressing on along the road that leads me ever further from Him and you? I should like Him to take me back to the dawn of that day that is erased from my memory, one that only He knows. The truth is that if anger could still mean something to me I should be so angry with Him. Why did He let me squander all the love I carried within me? Why did He let me make myself unworthy of you? But He does not even grant me the grace of His anger, Jeanne-Marie, I’m a whimpering animal, so cold I no longer even feel the pain that makes me whimper, and although I know that I lost the right to pray a long time ago, I pray all the same. All I wish is that He would let me return, if only for a moment, to where I left my soul.)
But everything fades away so quickly, Tahar’s face, smiling beneath the soft breeze that stirs the black curls of his hair, at Taghit or Timimoun, and the echoes of Claudie’s laughter on the beach at Piana. Capitaine André Degorce goes back to sit at his desk. He writes a single long sentence, an illegible scribble, into which he puts all his love.
Oh no, mon capitaine, I shall not forget you and nor will you be able to forget me, I know that, for I have a very clear memory of reading somewhere that we must forever share the fate of those who have loved us, and the love I bore you is perhaps more pure and true than the love you were surrounded with by your parents, your wife and your children and all those who believed they loved you. Your contempt does not matter any more than mine, mon capitaine, it is powerless against the force of this love I have never managed to eradicate from my heart, for it has been rooted there like a weed, full of vitality, and I know now that nothing will eradicate it. You cannot imagine how much easier it would be for me simply to be your enemy, rather than submitting to the tyranny of the love that binds me to you. I understand that you may want no part in it, that it may fill you with horror, but remember that it was not my choice either, and if you are still capable of being honest you must admit that, apart from me, no-one has loved the man you really are, for, in truth, no-one apart from me has known you. You are well aware of this, neither your wife, nor the boy you have brought up, nor the daughter you so inconsiderately begot know you and I am certain you must often have wondered what would survive of their love, could they but glimpse, if only for a second, the man you really are, the one you have striven to conceal from them for all these years, while constantly dreading that they would nevertheless discover him, and I would swear, mon capitaine, that you have chosen to live in fear and silence rather than risk confronting the fragility of their love. But I know you, I know what an incredible coward you are, I know the taste of the resentments that burn your mouth, and your erring ways, your lies, I know the immensity of your weakness, your unquenchable thirst for punishment, I know your tormented conscience because I am your brother, remember we were sired by the same battle, under the monsoon rains, and I have never ceased to love you like a brother. Oh, I know your secret dreams, mon capitaine, I know them so well that on some nights I feel as if you are dreaming within me, or else it is me slipping in beside you in the dream in which we have been transported very far away from the pitiless country of my birth, that country which is no longer mine and has never been yours, and the two of us are walking along a desert road between Taghit and Béchar, by the light of a very yellow crescent moon, which hangs like a street lamp in a sky without stars, we are walking amid objects half covered in sand, scattered over the ground as far as the eye can see, court shoes with broken heels, torn dresses whose colours have been erased by the desert wind that has stripped out all the embroidery with golden threads, a collapsed darbouka drum, an oud with no strings, blackened clusters of jewels, little boxes of henna and kohl, satin trousers and fragments of china, good luck charms, a whole trousseau that has slowly petrified in my memory since the one who assembled it has decayed into dust, an eternity ago, mon capitaine, and now these bone-dry remains are not even stirred by the wind that blows so strongly. You look about you, but none of the ones you seek are there, no little girl playing in the sand, no little boy, your wife is not waiting for you anywhere and the man you have been hoping all your life to see again will not come back to you and you try to call out his name in the darkness, but you have no voice and no-one can hear you. There is only me, mon capitaine, and very close to us, at the foot of a dune, a little dromedary crying out for its mother over and over again, stretching out its neck beneath the moon, but it cannot see us for a compassionate hand has blinded it, so that our wolf eyes, gleaming in the darkness, should never terrify anyone again. You are trying to escape from me, mon capitaine, but the undying power of my love shackles me to you and you cannot contrive to do so, all your futile running has never got you anywhere, and however breathlessly you run, I am still there, every tattered dress, the dromedary and the darbouka, each blade of grass, each fragment of coral and silver is like one of the infinite centres of the unimaginable circle round whose circumference you persist in running for no reason, mon capitaine, since however long you went on running for, you will never reach Taghit, you will never know if someone is waiting for you in the cool of the palm grove, at the foot of the earth walls, to speak to you at last the words I did not allow him to utter in the darkness of a cellar during a night in spring, an eternity ago, and when you have understood this, you fall to your knees in the dust of the long desert road and you look up at the moon imploringly. In this dream, which is also your own, mon capitaine, the time has come when I go up to you to clasp you close to my heart like a brother. You do not push me away, you let yourself come to me, shaking with silent sobs, and I am so happy, mon capitaine, because I have understood that our dream will never set us free. We shall not leave one another. And the time has come when I lean gently towards you to whisper in your ear that we have arrived in hell, mon capitaine – and that your prayers have been answered.