Selma wouldn’t listen. When Mathilde knocked at the door of the storeroom—where Selma now slept with her husband—her sister-in-law refused to open it. Mathilde kicked the door, she banged on it with her fists, she yelled, and then, resting her head against the wooden slats, she began speaking very quietly, as if she hoped Selma too would press her face against the door and listen to her advice, the way she always used to. In a gentle voice, without thinking, without calculating, Mathilde asked her sister-in-law to forgive her. She spoke to her about inner freedom, about the need to resign herself to her fate, about the illusory dreams of true love that lured young girls to the rocks of despair and failure. “I was young once too, you know.” She spoke to her about the future. “One day you’ll understand. One day you’ll thank us.” It was important, she told Selma, to look on the bright side. Not to let her sadness contaminate the birth of her first child. Not to brood over the loss of a young man who, although handsome, had also been cowardly and thoughtless. Selma didn’t reply. She was crouched against the wall, far from the door, her hands covering her ears. She’d confided in Mathilde, she’d let her touch her aching breasts, her still-flat belly, and Mathilde had betrayed her. No, Selma wouldn’t listen. She’d pour tar into her ears if she had to. Her sister-in-law had done what she’d done out of jealousy. She could have helped her run away, kill this baby, marry Alain Crozières. She could have put into action all those pretty speeches she’d given about the emancipation of women and the right to choose love. Instead she’d let the law of men rise up between them. She’d denounced Selma, and her brother had immediately turned to the old ways to solve the problem. She probably can’t stand the idea of me being happy, thought Selma. Happier than her and with a better marriage than hers.
When she wasn’t locked in her room Selma stayed close to the children or to Mouilala, making it impossible to have a private conversation. This was torture for Mathilde, who was desperate to be forgiven. She ran up behind Selma whenever she saw her alone in the garden. Once, she grabbed the back of her blouse and almost strangled her. “Let me explain. Please stop running away from me.” But Selma spun around and began hitting Mathilde with both hands, kicking her in the shins. Tamo heard their yells as they fought like children, but she didn’t dare get involved. They’d find a way to blame me for it, she thought as she closed the curtain. Mathilde protected her face and begged Selma: “Try to be reasonable. Your pilot disappeared anyway, as soon as he found out about the child. You should think yourself lucky that we found a way for you to avoid the shame.”
At night, while Amine snored beside her, Mathilde thought over what she’d said. Did she really believe it? Had she become that kind of woman? The kind that encourages others to be reasonable, to give up, to choose respectability over happiness? But ultimately, she thought, there was nothing she could have done. And she repeated this, over and over, not because she felt sorry for herself, but in an attempt to convince herself, to alleviate her guilt. She wondered what Mourad and Selma were doing at that moment. She imagined the aide-de-camp’s naked body, his hands on the young woman’s hips, his toothless mouth pressed against her lips. She envisioned them together in such detail that she had to force herself not to scream, shove her husband out of the bed, and weep over the fate of that child they’d abandoned. She got out of bed and started pacing up and down the hallway to calm her nerves. In the kitchen she ate leftover Linzer Torte with jam until she felt sick. Then she leaned out of the window, convinced that she would hear a moan or a grunt. But all she heard was the rats running up the trunk of the giant palm tree. She understood then that what tormented her, what revolted her, was less the marriage itself or the morality of Amine’s choice than the simple act of that unnatural copulation. And she had to admit that the real reason she kept following Selma around was not to apologize but to ask her questions about that vile, monstrous coupling. She wanted to know if the teenager had been frightened, if she’d felt a shiver of disgust when her husband’s penis penetrated her. If she’d shut her eyes and thought about her young pilot to blot out the reality of that ugly old man.
One morning a pickup truck parked in the courtyard and two boys unloaded a large wooden bed. The elder of the two couldn’t have been more than seventeen. He wore a pair of trousers that only reached halfway down his calves and a canvas cap faded by the sun. The younger boy had a doll-like face that offered a strange contrast with his massive, muscled body. He stood back and waited for the older boy to give him orders. Mourad pointed out the storeroom but the boy in the cap just shrugged. “It won’t fit through the door.” Mourad, who’d bought the bed from one of the best artisans in town, exploded. He wasn’t there to have a discussion. He ordered them to take the bed in sideways, dragging it along the ground. For more than an hour they shoved the bed, carried it, turned it over. They hurt their backs and their hands. Sweating and red-faced, the two boys laughed at Mourad’s stubbornness. “Come on, old man, be reasonable!” said the younger boy. “If it’s too big for the hole, you’ll never get it in there.” The foreman was disgusted by the boy’s lewd double entendre. Exhausted, the teenager sat on the bed base and winked at his companion: “It’s his missus who’ll be disappointed. This is a really nice bed for such a small house.” Mourad stared at the boys as they jumped on the bed and laughed. He felt stupid and he wanted to cry. When he’d seen this bed in the medina it had seemed perfect. He’d thought about Amine then, and how proud of him his boss would be: a man capable of buying a bed like this would be the best possible husband for his sister, Amine would think. “I’m an idiot,” Mourad muttered, and it took a huge effort of self-control not to beat the boys and take an ax to the bed. Instead he watched the truck vanish in a cloud of dust, his heart filled with a calm despair.
For two days the bed stayed where it was and nobody asked any questions. Amine said nothing, nor did Mathilde. They were both so embarrassed and ashamed that they pretended it was perfectly normal for a double bed to sit there, in the middle of a sandy courtyard. Then, one morning, Mourad asked for the day off and Amine said yes. The foreman picked up a mallet and smashed down the wall of the storeroom that faced the fields, then pushed the bed through the gap. After that, he got some bricks and mortar and began enlarging the room where he would live from now on with Selma. All day and long into the night he built a new wall. He intended to install a bathroom in the house for his wife, who currently had to use the outside toilets. Tamo stood on tiptoe to watch through the window as the foreman labored. Mathilde told her to mind her own business and get back to work.
When the house was ready Mourad felt proud, but it didn’t change his habits. At night he left the big bed to Selma while he slept on the floor.