Abduction (34 page)

Mathieu probably suffered from Meriem's enmity, although it didn't stop him from asking her mother for her hand two years after his friend had passed away. By that time, Meriem had already got wind of the rumours and slander being peddled around the neighbourhood, things like: “The widow of a former
mujahid
doesn't spend time with a Frenchman, not unless she's a shameless whore!” She also held it against her mother that she had not resisted the clumsy advances of a man who should only have aspired to the title of ‘best friend of the family'. Partly due to Meriem's bad mood, the mother stalled for a further two years before agreeing to marry Mathieu. They moved to Algiers, as their neighbours' hostile looks were becoming too hard to put up with. For the wedding to be able take place in Algiers, Mathieu agreed to go along with a sham conversion to Islam and it was under his new forename, Ali, that he officially became her stepfather. She should have been as happy for her mother as her mother was – as completely as with her previous husband. Deep down, the daughter was perhaps jealous of her mother for having managed to find her smile again in a country that was so ill-suited to joy. Meriem left the table when conversation turned to her father and she heard the two rogues talk about him with a quiver of emotion in their voices, as if he had died only the day before. Yes, she was sure – and she was sometimes beside herself, it seemed so inexplicable and even indecent – that Mathieu and her mother still cherished the friend and husband as much as ever. Deep down, she found it unjust that her father's suicide, though profoundly distressing for them, also allowed them to experience the joy of consoling each other.

She feels like yelling at her mother, “Hurry up, stop snoring, your husband is going to commit suicide just like the first!”But an observer perched somewhere in her mind grips her by one of the arteries of the heart:
If you have a conscience, switch it off fast if you really want to save your daughter!

She tries to swallow, but her mouth is but a dry orifice. If she were to lose her daughter, she would no longer be able to name things. Like an incision in her brain, she remembers, with unbearable tenderness, the scent of her daughter as a small girl, just waking up and rubbing her eyes. The child reaches out to her and snuggles her head up against her chest.

Three fingers! An absurd question bites her without warning: What has the devil done with the three fingers? Has he thrown them in the bin?

Oh, this is too unbearable!

Does her mother know that Mathieu tortured Algerians? Tortured her father? And that her father was mixed up in some sordid crime? Have their whole lives been lies?

Aziz comes into the kitchen, walks over to her and hugs her. She forbids herself to sob; she chases away the desire to throw herself down the deep well of tears, as one kicks a cur up the backside to chase it away.

She slips free of his embrace. They stare at each other, he standing there motionless, arms dangling, lips clenched, as pitiful as his wife. The fear of losing their daughter is slowly draining away all love between them. It's not his fault; she has nothing to reproach Aziz with, at least since his confession. She believed him to be more fainthearted, not to say cowardly in certain circumstances, but he didn't hesitate to kill in order to save Shehera. She should be thankful to him for that…

(Two little mental mice are engaged in a mad dialogue on the fringes of her main stream of thought: “
Grateful because he killed someone? He's a murderer now…” “I hope he didn't leave any clues. If the police catch him, they won't let him off lightly; they'll start off by beating him black and blue…” “Yes, Aziz is always so careless…”
)

Yet she knows that if she does not recover her daughter, she will never love anyone ever again. Not even this man whom she had once cherished more than anything in the world…

(One of the mice lies down flat, as if it were resigned to being eaten by the cat whose scent it can already smell:
You were solid gold to me, Aziz. For a long time, if you happened to be away and I found myself alone in my bed, I only had to speak your name to conjure up in my mind the fragrance of the lemon trees in the park where we first kissed. For years and years I always hungered for your saliva. Why do we always change for the worse?
)

She stands in front of the window, Aziz's silence weighing on her from behind like an iceberg. She wipes the misted-up windowpane with her hand. The openings in the blocks of flats resemble great, gouged-out eyes. According to the kidnapper's boastful insinuations, her daughter might be being held prisoner in one of those matchboxes.

She stares down at the dimly lit street. An idiotic part of her implores her to put all the intensity she can muster into this gaze, because that will help her little girl –
her little, little girl
– to escape and find her way home.

W
hen the telephone rang, the muezzin was shouting himself hoarse over the mosque's loudspeakers, exhorting the faithful to rise and accomplish the first of the five prayers. Dawn, with careless brushstrokes, had begun to brighten the blackness of the sky with striated splashes of yellow and red.

Meriem gives a start, dazzled by the light from the ceiling lamp; it is nearly six in the morning by the wall clock.

“It's your phone, Aziz.”

She doesn't recognise her own discordant voice. Aziz is slumped in his chair. Despite everything he addresses her a comforting grimace. She tries unsuccessfully to return his faint smile.

“Yes?… Is that you, Mathieu?”

Her husband's puffy eyes start to blink. He runs his fingers through his hair in a curious manner, as if he were going to tear the skin off his skull.

“… Your wife?… She's still asleep, the sleeping pills seem to have knocked her out… Meriem? Yes, she's right beside me…”

He hands her the mobile. Panicking, she shakes her head, but Aziz insists.

“He'd like to talk to you.”

She gives in and takes the device.

“Is that you, Meriem?”

“Yes, it's me.”

She perceives a slight hesitation due to her overly flat tone.

“You know now?”

“Yes, I know.”

“You know everything?”

“He rang and ordered Aziz to tell me everything. The past, the present.”

“Will you forgive me?”

Her throat tightens. She is on the verge of tears.

“Forgive you? What do I forgive a man who's about to lay down his life for my daughter?”

She breaks off with a gasp.

“It doesn't matter, Meriem. My carcass is no longer listed in the directory of human beings. I won't be a great loss.”

“To my mother you will, Mathieu.”

“Apart from to your mother… I'm sorry to cause her so much grief.”

The Frenchman's voice has become dreamy. With her sleeve Meriem wipes away the tear that is blurring her vision.

“All the good things I've experienced since the war have been a bonus to me. And what's actually going to happen: just the end of a lout who is paying off his debts, nothing more. I haven't been a very commendable person. Long ago I did a lot of harm to your father, you know that now.”

“Mathieu, don't say that…”

The old man lets slip a little chuckle.

“I loved it so much when you still used to call me Uncle Mathieu.”

She is crying her eyes out now, crying so hard that she doesn't speak the sole sentence that is yapping away in her head:
Don't kill yourself, Mathieu, maybe there's another way of saving Shehera.

“I don't have any more time. I've got to go.”

He has a frog in his throat. The fine hairs on the back of Meriem's neck stand up on end. She wants to ask:
Where have you got to go?
but the words won't cross her lips. A little, insolent gatekeeper mutters:
Hey, slut, don't insist too much or else fright will make short work of the courage he has mustered and your daughter will take the rap.

“Promise me one last thing, Meriem. If your daughter gets out of this alive, make sure you explain to your mother that I barely had a choice, that none of us had a choice. But, please, tell her as often as you can that I loved her. That's maybe not consolation enough, but it's all I can offer her.”

Then the weary voice goes quiet. It is replaced by a crackling noise – and then silence. The telephone is just an inanimate object in her palm. Meriem looks at it incredulously with the feeling that she is holding Mathieu's corpse in her hand.

They didn't wait for long. In the meantime, the husband and wife didn't dare look at or speak to each other, gripped by the same sensation of being slaves to some barbarian cult, reduced to hoping against hope that this fresh oblation of human flesh will appease once and for all the raging hunger of the divinity holding their daughter.

They heard a loud noise, followed by a clamour of voices. They rushed over to the window. The square in front of their building was still deserted, but lights quickly went on in the neighbouring flats and people appeared at the windows. One of them was pointing somewhere with an outstretched arm.

“Maybe we'll see better from the balcony?” Meriem whispered.

“It's the mosque,” yelled their neighbour from the foot of their block. “An attack, I think!”

The father and mother turned their heads towards the religious building. The neighbour ran off, shouting frantically, “My son, my son… My son went to morning prayers… Dear God, save my son!”

“What can you see?” asked Meriem.

“Not much. Looks like…”

The already considerable crowd in front of the building concealed the entrance. Aziz's mother-in-law's voice rang out from Shehera's bedroom: “What's happening?” Aziz dashed down the stairs, with Meriem close behind.

The crowd didn't make a sound. Some were in pyjamas, others in their underwear; all of them were listening to a man in a burnous.

“I was about to go home when this damned car appeared. It drove into the courtyard of the mosque, heading straight for us. In God's name, I thought our final hour had come. At the last second…”

Still in shock, he stressed, “He swerved at the last second!”

Eyes bulging, he gestured towards the vehicle embedded in one of the wings of the building. Only the boot was visible in the light shed by the lampposts, protruding from between breezeblocks. A wheel was lying on the ground a few yards from the vehicle.

“The mihrab wall has been reduced to dust. God saved us, believe me! Let us give thanks to Him, brothers!”

Several “
Let us give thanks to theMerciful One. Amen!”
echoed in reply.

“Is the son of a bitch dead?”

“Probably… Unless his head is harder than bricks…”

“He was probably a drunkard…”

“Or one of those bastard drug addicts…”

“Have pity on him, after all he's a son of Adam!”

“You're right, brother… But there's loads of damage…”

“Have you seen? The steering wheel has crushed his ribcage…”

“Hey, don't smoke. It stinks of petrol…”

“Have you called an ambulance? The police?”

“Yes, but they won't come until it's light…”

“Yeah, those poofs are worried about their arses…”

“Aren't you ashamed of uttering such coarse remarks so early in the morning? You are outside a mosque!”

“Sorry… It is Satan speaking through our mouths…”

“Are we going to pull him out?”

“Steady on. This side of the building's collapsed and the beam's only staying up by a miracle… What if it catches fire, eh? Would you risk your life for a dead man?”

“Not for a stranger, no.”

The neighbour who'd been worrying about his son was now hugging a tall, bearded beanpole. Catching sight of Aziz and Meriem, he smiled at them misty-eyed.

“See, God protected him for me! I'm going to throw a great party in thanks and you'll come, I hope?”

Aziz ignored him and walked over to what remained of the automobile. The colour and the make matched; he deciphered the number plate merely to save time.

“Is it him?” Meriem asked with a quavering voice, joining him as the bystanders looked on with a mixture of curiosity and disapproval. She was only wearing a housecoat and her arms were bare.

“Is he dead?”

Aziz nodded. They stood there motionless and stunned. The imam recognised them. He knitted his brows in displeasure at the sight of an uncovered woman in the courtyard of the mosque. Muttering through his teeth, he strode over to the couple with the intention of reminding them publicly of the rules of decency. Then, perhaps because of the haggard fixedness of their faces, he stopped.

“By Allah, I hope it's not a relative.”

“What did you say, imam?”

Aziz stared wide-eyed. A stabbing pain shot through his temples; it felt as if he'd been hit on the head but that only now was the blow producing its effect.

“Do you know the dead man inside the car?”

“It's my father-in-law,” he croaked back.

He swallowed, moistening his lips as he did so, but not managing to rid himself of the lump in his stomach.

“The father of your…”

The imam hesitated, then with the customary and excessive prudishness of peasants and clerics, he opted for ‘mother of your children' rather than ‘spouse', motioning with his chin at the woman accompanying him. Aziz thought: ‘At least you didn't add
with all due respect
, you bastard!'

“Yes, it's my wife's stepfather.”

The imam was surprised. “The old
gaouri
who went by the name of Ali? Whatever got into him? Had he been drinking?”

A murmur ran through the small crowd. Aziz felt like laying his hand on his wife's shoulder, but decided against it because the people were now examining them with an increasingly unfriendly interest.