Harraga (16 page)

How have we managed to live surrounded by so little grandeur, so little clarity? I wonder.

I gave the order to retreat. To stay too long here would finish us off. Under the arch of the monumental gates, Chérifa threw a tantrum that knocked me for six: ‘Why did we come here?’ ‘We’re just taking a stroll,’ I replied, fingers crossed. ‘Just over there is the Museum of Antiquities and Fine Art, you’ll see it’s educa— . . . it’s fun.’ Seen from without, the building is as chipped and peeling as a leper colony, but to hell with outward appearance, the interior might well be magnificent.

As indeed it was. Though to realise that, you had to have eyes to see, something Chérifa, from the outset, stubbornly refused to do. Four thousand years of beauty, of unfathomable mysteries harmoniously cohabiting beneath dizzyingly high ceilings. They seemed to eye us scornfully as if to say ‘What’s
that
doing here?’ We felt insignificant, ugly, obtuse, in a word humiliated by the outmoded and inefficient ideas swirling in our heads. I saw Chérifa become rigid. At least she felt intimidated; that was a start. The vast entrance hall of stone and marble in the flamboyant Louis-Philippe style cannot but seem overwhelming to people like us who live in dark, sweltering anthills. Then, suddenly, in her eyes I saw the question that would cut my legs from under me and force me to abandon my tutoring: ‘So what did we come in here for?’

The spell was broken.

Heads bowed, we traipsed morosely through centuries and civilisations and nothing jumped out, nothing forced us to ask the crucial question: ‘What is that doing here?’ The galleries were deserted, they told of superannuated futility, of soullessness, of banishment. The paintings, the statues, the
objets d’art
, the gemstones, the engravings looked like antiquated curios arranged by pen-pushers exhausted by routine. The beautiful is beautiful only when one knows. We walked past without noticing and found ourselves outside in the sunshine, depressed, dazzled, tired, disappointed.

All this is another world to Chérifa, a bizarre, artificial world assembled from the flea market of past centuries, past millennia. She stared at everything wide-eyed as an owl woken by a sudden commotion. I wanted her to understand that we had not magically appeared from an Aladdin’s lamp or some sleight-of-hand in a laboratory, that we were the product of these things that surrounded us, but no words can pierce a mental block. Chérifa has much to see if she is to make headway and I cannot do it for her. It is for her to decide.

A hasty change of plan – we weave our way through the streets according to the code, prevaricating with the imponderable. Everything else – the Bardo Museum, the great mosques, the Ketchaoua mosque and the Jewish one, the Cathédrale du Sacré-Coeur, the basilica of Notre Dame d’Afrique, the citadel, the Palace of the Raïs, the Villa du Centenaire, the Cemetery of the Two Princesses, the Tomb of the Christian, the Roman ruins of Tipaza and the rest – will have to wait for another time, if one day the wind should change.

We wolfed down pizza in a ramshackle hovel no worse than the next, swigged lemonade from the bottle and headed home by bus having abandoned Mourad – who thought he spotted some old comrades in arms – in a bar that seemed somewhat mysterious through the thick pall of smoke.

I felt Chérifa draw away. She looked at me as though I were a stranger or a relative in whom she’d just discovered some bizarre vice. It was at that moment that I truly understood the meaning of despair.

Education may well be salvation, but it is also the thing that most clearly divides people.

Had it happened
, this thing that was inevitable? This is what I asked myself as I turned the key in the door. Was this merely foreboding? No, there was a clear sign: a thick, heavy silence. That was unlike Chérifa, who surrounds herself with noise, all day long she has the TV, the radio, the record player or the CD player turned up so loud the walls are queasy and my poor ears are assailed. Ever since she showed up, I’ve forgotten the meaning of silence. The silence that greeted me now was heavy and impenetrable, but it was also unusual, deafening, glacial. I ran inside, I shouted, I screamed. I stopped and then I ran again, I ran faster, screaming fit to burst my lungs: ‘Chérifaaaaa . . . Chérifaaaa . . . Chérifaa . . . Chérifa . . . Chéri . . .!’ Then I fell to my knees . . . I don’t remember where. I don’t know how, but I found myself on the sofa, head in my hands, trembling and feverish. I felt a terrible pain as, on the horizon, I saw a whole tsunami of pain bearing down on me.

Papa, Maman and Yacine are long gone, God called them to Himself, then that idiot Sofiane let himself be caught up in his own delusions, now it is Chérifa’s turn. She is nothing to me, just a stray chick who turned up uninvited, but the love I feel for her has made her my little sister, my daughter, my baby. What have I done to deserve this?

Then suddenly I noticed that her clothes were still strewn about the place, under my feet, draped over the TV, the table, the dresser, the chairs. Where our clothes are, we are. Or not far off. I’m impulsive by nature, I always overreact, I’m my own worst enemy, I act first and think later.

It was a terrible week, twice the little hussy ran away – brief flits of a few hours, but so nerve-racking they have left me wiped out. These are obviously portents.

Like the fledgling that flaps its wings on a branch, is she preparing to take flight?

Day by day I am discovering that our lives only partly belong to us. And there is no guarantee that the part we can control is more crucial than that part we cannot.

She is utterly astounding, that girl. I would never have imagined that the dusty old
douars
of Algeria were capable of producing such a character. In the godforsaken places stuck out in the back of beyond, you come to expect ­anything – lunatics, neurotics, egotists, runaways, snobs – anything but this. These are city problems, for crying out loud.

What’s worse is that I’ve got used to her little disappearing acts. The time will come when I don’t even notice her disappear and reappear, it’s like having a cat, you only notice it’s missing when you try to feed it: ‘Here, puss-puss-puss, where are you, you little pest?’, and when it finally shows up wanting food, it plants itself in front of the fridge like a carrion eater and yowls, ‘Miaow, miaow, open this thing for me!’ You end up wondering who is dependent on whom. It’s blackmail and I won’t stand for it.

The way Chérifa talks about her comings and goings drives me mad. You’d think she was going to the bakery or coming back from the dairy: ‘Hello, a pitcher of milk, please, thanks, bye.’ I’m the one who is polite and apologetic, she is the one who gets angry, jabs her finger. Besides, there is no dairy around here any more, no milk churns, no cows, no goats, nothing, we buy our milk from the local shop like everything else, it comes in plastic cartons full of botulism. And the bread they sell tastes like soap.

Getting information out of Chérifa is like pulling teeth.

The comparison to a cat suits her,  she disappeared last night just because she saw some guy tom-catting under the balcony – the same guy I saw slipping between the poplar trees after midnight the day after she first showed up. It’s reassuring to know we weren’t under surveillance, we were just being stalked! Phew! Well, that’s one mystery solved. This tom-cat lives in a nameless shantytown near Bab el-Oued between Rampe Valée and Climat-de-France, the neighbouring ghetto. He’d been hanging around when he spotted Chérifa looking for my place. I don’t know whether he suddenly fell head over heels in love or whether he took a moment to think about things, but one way or another, he clearly decided he had a good reason for hanging around the neighbourhood and loitering under my window. Ever since, this guy has been tracking us, slipping in the shadows, waiting for
mektoub
to tell him when to go for broke. Last night, he finally did.

‘So what happened?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. We talked for a bit outside.’

‘What else?’

‘We went for a walk around the block, not that it’s any of your business! He wanted to show me some of the damage from the flooding in Bab el-Oued last year.’

‘I suppose it was exciting. A thousand people drowned, as many more disappeared and God knows how many houses were swept away. So, what else?’

‘The poor guy, he lost his father and his brothers and most of his friends in the flood.’

‘That’s very sad . . . and?’

‘We went down as far as Sostara to look at the little restaurant where he threw himself on a home-made bomb. He used to work as a labourer down on the docks and he was on his lunch break. He lost one arm, one leg, one ear, one eye, his nose, a . . .’

‘The poor guy, unemployed and disabled, he’s really not had much luck, but there are worse things, believe me . . . what else?’

‘Around his way, people call him “Missing Parts”.’

‘Charming. But he didn’t drag you into some tramp’s hovel to watch television, that’s the main thing.’

‘We did go to his place in Climat-de-France, he wanted to introduce me to his mother.’

‘He’s got some ulterior motive.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind. So how is she, his mother?’

‘She was hit in the head by a stray bullet during the attack at the Marché de la Lyre where she sells pancakes. She doesn’t get out any more, poor thing.’

‘So, after all that, did he tell you what it was he wanted?’

‘Just to talk. The poor guy is lonely, he lost half his friends in disasters and the other half in terrorist attacks. He says girls make better friends because they’re more likely to survive.’

‘If he comes prowling around here again, tell him that girl friends eventually end up getting married at which point “just talking” is almost as dangerous as sticking your nose in a grinder.’

Chérifa wasn’t listening, and then stupidly she said, ‘I prefer guys, girls can be really bitchy, they steal your stuff and they’re always jealous.’

‘I agree, but that’s not the point. So where exactly were you all day today?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Don’t come the innocent with me, young lady, I want you to tell me right now. If you’re going to get yourself killed or kidnapped, I need to know how and by whom.’

‘I swear, you’re crazy. People go for a walk all the time.’

‘True, but you don’t know what else people get up to!’

Dear God, why is everything so difficult with some people? This crazy girl is calling
me
crazy, what is this country coming to? Eventually I got it out of her, but by then I was beside myself.

‘I just wandered around the neighbourhood,’ she said.

‘Did you indeed? And what’s new since the last century?’

‘I had a chat with Tante Zohra.’

‘Did you tell her the truth? I hope you didn’t, because she’ll use it against you, she’s never happier than when she’s meddling in my business.’

‘We just talked.’

‘And then?’

‘I went into the old house.’

‘You did what? Say that again!’

‘Over there . . . the house across the road.’

‘What?? Say that again!’

‘The old house. The man waved at me from his window. . . so I went upstairs . . .’

‘Bluebeard?!’

‘He’s a sweet little old man.’

‘What?? Say that again!’

‘The old guy across the road! Are you deaf or what??’

‘Has he got a beard? Is it blue?’

‘No, he’s got a head of white hair and thick glasses perched on his nose.’

‘But he’s a human being? A real live person?’

‘He speaks some language I don’t understand . . . D’you think it might be French?’

‘How should I know?’

‘He talks the way you talk when you’re angry with me.’

‘Well then, it’s French, I only speak it when I’m angry.’

‘He speaks Algerian too, but with an accent.’

‘That’s the
pied-noir
accent, you’d never mistake it for an English accent. So what did he say, this man?’

‘He told me that I was pretty and charming,’ she simpers.

‘Well, well, Bluebeard was trying to chat you up! I’ve always known how things were going to turn out, I’ve known since I was a little girl.’

‘He asked me if you had news from Sofiane, he said he hopes to see him again soon.’

‘It’s a good chat-up line, I’ll give him that. What else? I want to know everything.’

‘Nothing. He made us some hot chocolate. He’s got loads of stuff in his house, it’s lovely, he’s got furniture and things, paintings, souvenirs, he’s got cats . . .’

‘So, apart from the chocolate and the cats, did he give you a tour of the rest of the museum? Or have you forgotten? And how is it that I’ve never seen this old friend of yours?’

‘His door doesn’t open on to our street, it opens on to the hill on the other side. Anyway, he never goes out.’

‘Oh, so there’s a secret passageway. That’s another mystery solved. It’s amazing how many mysteries get cleared up when you’re around. Before long, we’ll know too much, and that’s dangerous. So, what happened next?’