Abduction (27 page)

“We get out of here, then we'll see.”

“You want me to lead the Frenchman who tortured me to our men?”

“You mean the
fells
from your
katiba
?”

“I think you mean the
FLN fighters
,” the prisoner suggested, stressing every syllable, his face suddenly bare of all expression.

“No, I definitely don't want you leading me to your… to
them
,” cried the deserter, unable to conceal his fear. “We get away from HQ, we reach the road under cover and then, when the time's right, good day, goodbye, we separate and clear off in different directions.”

“You're setting me free only to split up so soon?” the prisoner said sarcastically, his face still every bit as closed. “Arabs may be thick, but even a donkey might start wondering about you! You need me in order to quit the army, is that what you'd have me believe?”

He spoke calmly, rolling his ‘r's a lot and rubbing his wrists where the rope he'd been hung up by had left deep, ugly weals.

“Look at these wounds – you almost took my arms off! Your offer makes no sense. Why would you run the slightest risk for me when you've tortured me for days on end? Where's the catch? Are you trying to obtain through cunning what you couldn't through beating?”

The man eyed him with quiet hatred. The sergeant's voice was supposed to sound scathing, but started to quaver as the insult hit home.

“You're like the plague victim's turd laughing at the pool of piss under the guy who caught cholera! After what you did in Mechta Kasbah, a shit like you isn't really in any position to lecture people, wouldn't you say?”

The
fell
shook his head sombrely, but it wasn't clear whether he was agreeing or not. Then he uttered an unexpected sound – a kind of furious “Heuh!” – before spitting on the ground. For a couple of seconds, Mathieu was about to hit this native who was making fun of him with impunity; he had beaten him so often that it felt almost unfair not to be able to thrash him anymore.

“Watch it, mate. You think too much for someone who deserves to be flushed down the toilets of a brothel.”

Still holding the empty pistol in his right hand, the prisoner unwittingly puckered up his lips as if tasting the spice of the strange fate his former torturer had presented him with.

Mathieu lost his temper. “There is no catch – I swear on my mother's life! I've brought along some civilian clothes. If you want to be free, you should put them on…”

He had sworn on his mother's life for the first time ever!
I'm going nuts!
he thought. Trembling with anger and incomprehension at himself, Mathieu opened his haversack to get out the clothes. He just had time to notice his ex-prisoner's raised arm. Something exploded in his skull and he fell, first to his knees and then face down on the ground.

A cracking of branches roused him abruptly from unconsciousness. He spat out the dirt and small stones soiling his mouth.

“Ow!” he went, putting one hand to his temple, but stifled a second cry of pain. How long had he been unconscious? The soldiers sent out from HQ to look for them must be hiding in the bushes; they would have heard him shout out!

How am I going to explain myself? God, they're going to tear me to pieces!
he screamed silently, curling up in terror. His head was aching horribly. Mathieu cursed with all his soul the strange outbreak of scruples that had driven him to release an inmate he had tortured for so long. Now it was his turn to shit his pants!

“Hey?”

The voice behind the bush called out to him in a chillingly ironic tone: “Get up, idiot! And just so you know, I've put
your
magazine in
your
pistol! Come on, hurry up, your friends will be here any moment…”

“I… It's…”

Eyes still wide, the soldier brought up the sleeve of his jacket to wipe his lips without thinking.

“Yes, it's me, the disfigured freak! Biting the dust, are we? Ah, I almost forgot that you loved Algeria so much now you'd like to eat it! Come on, let's get going. Actually, the good thing about having a hostage is – that you could come in useful if the patrol catches up with us.”

The words spilled out of Mathieu's mouth. “They'll… they'll kill us both.”

Then, as if embarrassed by such a spontaneous expression of his fear, he said, “The captain must have realised – he's not a jerk like me. He'll definitely ask for a commando party to be sent out.”

For a short moment a hint of uncertainty veiled the Algerian's gaze.

“All right then, you'll be my justification for my own people.”

“Meaning?”

“I… I left them in a bit of a hurry, without having really received permission.”

“You're a traitor to the FLN?”

“No, but the tendency is to regard you as one until there's proof of the contrary! You're my ticket home – coming back with a
gaouri
from the colonial intelligence services can't do me any harm. You must know a few things, eh? At least the names of traitors from our side…”

“But then I… they'll…”

“I very much hope they'll…”

The
fell
let out a long, apparently gleeful chuckle, but his eyes took no part in it. He mimicked several instruments: a whip, a nail wrench, a soldering iron.

“Yes, they'll… you, then they'll… you and even… you…. If need be I'll give them a few ideas about how an experienced French army torturer goes about making someone talk. And then, when the fun is over, we'll post your bollocks to that fine DOP captain you admire so much.”

“But you can't… I set you free…”

“Set me free, did you? After making me drink bucketfuls of water mixed with disinfectant and urine? Get walking, you son of a bitch. One wrong move and I'll put a bullet up your arse. Wouldn't make a pretty sight, comrade. Your shit would mix in with your blood, infect your intestine or your stomach, and you'd suffer for many long hours, days even, of agony before dying of gangrene. By that time, you'd have been stripped to the bone by jackals or wild boar. Because they are allowed to eat pig!”

T
he farcical flight of the battered torturer and the murderer twisted by this land of distrust is how Mathieu would describe, much later, their several days of wandering through a landscape of thorny undergrowth furrowed by almost waterless wadis where, without admitting it, they hid from both the French military and the local peasants. The latter might just as easily have turned out to be allies of the FLN maquisards as relatives of the victims of Melouza hell-bent on vengeance. Not to mention the zealous
harkis
or the even more numerous and unpredictable ‘neutrals', who were quite capable of turning you in to someone, anyone… Any of these had excellent reasons for eliminating them in a way that was par for this war – in other words: as hideously as possible.

Mathieu very soon realised that Tahar didn't know the area any better than he did. They passed some shepherds who didn't see them – or pretended not to see them, which was very much the role of a lookout. They were very fortunate when some French soldiers just missed them. A helicopter passed overhead, but they hid under some jujube trees in time. The Frenchman, still in his fatigues, walked in front of the Algerian.

Tahar was showing signs of exhaustion towards the end of the first day. Mathieu guessed that they were probably deep in rebel territory where the army only deployed commando parties and air support. His companion's eyes kept falling shut with fatigue and pain before opening again to search around haggardly for his prisoner. They rested as best they could (Tahar balanced the gun on his knees with his finger on the trigger!) in the shade of a copse of ash trees lost in thorny scrubland that announced the sheltering forest they could make out on the horizon. They hadn't eaten since dawn, and the little water they had found in a wadi crevice was but a maddening memory. Running his tongue over his desperately parched lips, Mathieu cursed himself for not having brought either a canteen or any food with him, even though he knew that kind of clobber would have aroused the sentry's suspicion. The old and new prisoners exchanged very few words, the former contenting himself with a waggle of his chin to convey his orders. Only once did Mathieu beg him, “Take me back to the road; I saved your life!” All his guard granted him was an indifferent glance.

In late afternoon they ran into a cork harvester perched on his donkey. As if it were a normal occurrence to meet a swollen-faced native with his gun trained on a French soldier with a bloody forehead, the peasant greeted them ceremoniously and went on his way without looking round.

“Hey, call him back. Maybe that bloke has something to eat or drink in his bag. I've got some money on me, remember?” Mathieu asked, raising his voice, driven to distraction by his companion's silence. “This can't go on. We're dying of hunger and thirst!”

“We're carrying on. He'll report us!”

They upped the pace heading west, only stopping when they reached the cover of some cork oaks at dusk. Finding their way by the croaking of the frogs, they came to a pool which, despite the vile-looking water, struck them as a miracle of nature. They gathered together some mealy acorns, which Mathieu reluctantly swallowed for want of anything better. Busy chomping on the large seeds with his back against a tree trunk and the pistol flung down at his feet, Tahar didn't seem to be watching his hostage as closely as before. The bucolic, almost fraternal nature of the scene, beneath an unreal moon, plunged the Frenchman into a stupor. Had he really tortured the man who was now nibbling away just as melancholically as he at these acorns, which were bound to give them both diarrhoea before long? And this Arab, whose expression occasionally segued into utter despondency, and who was deep in thought at that moment, twiddling a blade of grass between his fingers; could he really have murdered teenagers? Were they not like Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday on a virgin island, miraculously deprived of everything and especially of the memory of their crimes?

“Own up to something for once,” Mathieu exclaimed, spitting out the fibrous bits to escape this feeling that was seriously bothering him, “you're just as scared that there might be some maquisards around, aren't you? What kind of filth have you been up to make you so afraid of your brothers from the ALN?”

Tahar studied him maliciously.

“You've made a fair bit of progress since this morning, my boy; you're saying ALN now instead of
fellagha
! Another blow with a rifle butt and you'll forget those ‘
sand niggers
' and ‘
rats
' you've showered me with… Maybe the mountain air will go to your head and you'll forget that you even tortured me?”

The brown eyes stared intently at him– different eyes from those that had blinked in terror when he was in the DOP's hands. (
More intelligent
, Mathieu realised with horror before thinking, unaware of his own irony:
You little wog, you speak French far too well to be completely trustworthy!
)

“What do you expect? That I'm going to forget that you wrecked my body and soul, all because you helped me escape? You fucked me with bottles, made me swallow my own shit and piss, and now you want to chat to me as if we were in some Moorish café in Constantine? Or maybe you think you're some kind of inverse Christ figure? You beat someone and then forgive the person you've beaten. But I haven't asked you for anything!”

He stood up, clenching his fists. Close by, perched in the upper branches like some sinister bystander, a crow croaked away like a saw.

“Why did you set me free anyway? You think I'm just a child-killer, a barbarian. Since when does anyone help someone like me? Since when does a shit like you help a shit like me? What do you expect of me? That I'm going to thank you for it as well?
Eh
? That you'll get off that lightly,
eh
?”

He had uttered these two “
ehs
' like the groan of a very old man, several tones lower than the rest of his outburst, and all the more menacing for it. The two men sized each other up for a few seconds, then Mathieu suddenly dived forwards, reaching for the pistol on the ground.

The soldier felt as if his jaw was going to explode, because Tahar had jammed his knee between the gun and his chin. Before he could even check whether it was broken, another blow, this one aimed at his lower back, sent him sprawling face down for the second time that day.

“Move so much as a finger and you're dead. Watch out: this isn't the Arab son of a bitch you demolished back at the DOP talking to you; this is the barrel of your pistol. And it's in great shape…”

He sniggered. “A real pistol from your mother country.”

Tahar ordered the prisoner to take the laces out of his big army boots and then, at gunpoint, to tie his feet together.

“Pull it tight, no cheating. Now, lie down and stretch your arms out well behind you. Further.”

He tied his wrists together with the second bootlace. Then he doubled the bonds around his ankles with Mathieu's belt.

It was now completely dark. The moonlight barely filtered through the thick branches. The man contemplated the figure lying at his feet and his face displayed only immense despair. He turned the captive's body over with the toe of his shoe. Neither of them could see the other's eyes.

“You and I have a problem of vocabulary, my friend.”

And tearing a branch off the cork oak, he lashed Mathieu with it. The latter screamed, more in surprise than pain.

“No bawling, dickhead. Sound carries a long way round here and those ALN guys have sharp ears.”

The second blow was even harder.

“The vocabulary problem is the following: I know what torture is like; you don't. You have practised it on others, but it remains – how should I say? – theoretical. I thought you needed to gain a deeper knowledge of your profession by crossing that boundary. I've decided to generously share some of my past experience with you. You'll find out that no experience is more personal. We'll make do with what we've got here – some branches and maybe some stones. When you've learnt your lesson well, we'll be on a roughly equal footing to talk about it.”