Two Testaments (4 page)

She stopped, but David knew the end of the sentence.
It hurts the way it hurt when you walked out of my life seven years ago.

2

David woke abruptly, his body drenched with sweat. He pulled the sheets off and struggled to remember where he was. Algiers … Anne-Marie.

He swallowed hard and propped himself up on the mattress with his good arm. He remembered listening to the locusts chirping in the summer nights long ago. Then he would lie awake for a long time, thinking of Anne-Marie and their clandestine encounters where their passion was spent.

He closed his eyes to the memory. They had been teenagers. Rebellious kids. His first experience of love. He had not known what had happened to her when he returned to the States, and yet he felt responsible now, housed in the same apartment. It was not lust that made him want her again. Perhaps it was pity. Or the desire to protect. For a moment he considered slipping into her room, holding her in his arms, kissing away the pain.

Moustafa lay a few feet from him, asleep. The young Arab loved her fiercely, David could see. His eyes burned with it. But Anne-Marie was right. No pied-noir would marry a harki. It would mean ostracism from both societies.

Why was life so complicated? he wondered angrily. Why was there an angelic redhead waiting for him on the other side of the Mediterranean with the taste of his kisses on her lips? Yet he was not afraid for Gabriella. She had the spunk and the faith to pull her through a long line of disappointments. Yes, the faith.

He groaned to himself. Anne-Marie did not need him. She had lived through hell, and though scarred, she would come out fighting.

But Ophélie. Surely he owed it to his daughter to give her an intact family. He rolled over and closed his eyes, listening again to the heavy, encumbering silence. Maybe if he listened long enough, this strange new God would tell him something.

By the time he finally drifted back to sleep, the first light of dawn was peeking over the horizon.

He awoke to Moustafa shaking him and saying, “Listen! Do you hear it?”

David squinted and blinked, his eyes adjusting to the morning light. The sound of gunfire peppered the air. “What is it?”

“The OAS. You know, the secret group made up of dissenters from the French army. They’ve taken over the neighborhood during the night. It could get very bloody.”

“Right here in Bab el-Oued?” David was incredulous. “How do you know?”

Moustafa met his eyes with his own somber gaze. “I know.”

David quickly dressed himself. “Should we tell Anne-Marie?”

“She’s already up.”

David nodded, brushing his fingers through his hair. “What do you think we should do?”

“There’s nothing to do but wait.”

Anne-Marie entered the room, a thick, oversized bathrobe pulled around her. Moustafa took her hand.

“The OAS has set up a military fortress in Bab el-Oued. They think they can oppose the French army.” He cursed. “Trouble is coming to our doorstep. Mark my words.”

Hussein slipped down the alleyways of the Casbah into the streets of Bab el-Oued in the early morning. Hiding behind an old building on rue Christophe Colomb, he peered down the street to where a group of pied-noir teenagers had surrounded two army corps trucks. The youths held submachine guns, pointing them arrogantly at the soldiers. For a moment it seemed the soldiers would easily relinquish their arms. Then one of them made a move, and a pied-noir opened fire, spraying the two trucks with bullets. The driver of the first truck slumped forward until his forehead touched the shattered windshield.

Hussein’s eyes grew wide as he watched two other soldiers, wounded, fall from the truck. The youths grabbed the guns of the dead soldiers and fled down the street. Hussein retreated into the shadows of the building, his heart thumping wildly. More blood! And this time the blood was spilled between Europeans. The pied-noirs—French citizens themselves—were firing on the French army. The army would no doubt fire back. This was news for Ali.

Hussein felt like a small boy watching a war movie as he witnessed the battle of Bab el-Oued. Now fidgeting in the
boulangerie
on the neighborhood’s main shopping street, he watched several tanks rumbling down the street, spewing a steady stream of bullets from their turrets. From atop a roof a man fired a bazooka, missing the tanks but smashing into an approaching ambulance.

Hussein glanced up as the whirring sound of a helicopter was drowned out by the sound of the grenades it dropped, exploding on the roof where the sniper had been.

War. War between the Europeans.

Sporadic shelling continued throughout the afternoon. Hussein dodged in and out of the small streets of the neighborhood, adrenalin pumping through his small frame, his eyes glazed, impersonal, as he observed another day of murder. He was nothing but a reporter, doing his job. He repeated it time and again in his mind. A reporter for Ali.

By late afternoon he could tell the French army was winning. Four T-6 training planes zipped through the sky, launching rockets and diving toward several snipers who were still visible on rooftops. The OAS would not hold Bab el-Oued.

No pied-noirs were venturing out of their apartments. Hussein had not seen Anne-Marie Duchemin or Moustafa Dramchini. But he had seen plenty else. It would have to be enough for now.

David stared from the balcony as tanks rumbled through the street, sending vibrations like a herd of wild elephants on the march. Their guns shifted in a circular pattern, pointing toward the apartment buildings.

“Are you crazy!” Moustafa scolded, pulling David back into the bedroom. “The army has made its stand clear. They want order, and if anyone opposes, they’ll fire, at Arab, pied-noir, or American.” The last word he pronounced as if it were a spoon of thick, foul-tasting medicine.

Darkness had fallen, and the whole
quartier
of Bab el-Oued appeared to be in a state of shock. Marcus Cirou had rushed into the apartment and was now furiously smoking and pacing in the den, sliding his fingers through his slick gray hair. He announced the verdict to his three houseguests.

“There must be over a hundred dead or wounded among us,” he said. “The army has blockaded the neighborhood. No one can get in. No ambulances, no doctors. The wounded are being hidden in homes. Bloody, catastrophic mess.” Sweat beaded on his forehead as he blew smoke into the air, his eyes fiery with anger and fear.

Without warning, the entrance door to the apartment splintered open and two
gendarmes
forced their way inside, brandishing pistols and shouting for everyone to lift their hands. While one of the French police, young and gloomy, held his pistol on the four people in the kitchen, the other, older and heavyset, tramped his way through the apartment. He threw open closets, smashed in the television, yanked clothes off their hangers, then came back to the kitchen, livid with rage.

“Are you traitors too? Filthy OAS! Murdering your own countrymen. Do you want to know how we feel about that?” He jerked Marcus by the collar, the pistol butt thrust under his chin.

Anne-Marie clutched Moustafa’s arm, terrified. The officer noticed, looked confused for a moment, then snickered. “What are you anyway? Crazy swine! The OAS, hiding Arabs in Bab el-Oued! Let’s have a look at you there.” He moved forward, grabbing Anne-Marie and shoving her to stand alone beside the second officer. His breath reeked of liquor.

She trembled before them.

“Did you hear me?” he screamed. “Undress! What other secrets are you hiding, woman!” Forcefully the heavy officer yanked at her sweater, laughing cruelly as the collar ripped, exposing her bare shoulder.

“Please!” Moustafa stepped forward, looking the officer in the eye. “You’re right. These good people have taken me in. My father fought with you. Lieutenant Dramchini, a harki. Perhaps you knew him. He was murdered by the FLN, and now I’m hiding. These people are not traitors. I’m the traitor. The traitor to my people for you. Surely you won’t deal with us in the same manner as the FLN.”

The officer’s lip twitched uncomfortably. He released Anne-Marie, who fell toward David. He caught her and held her tight as Moustafa continued.

“We’re trying to escape to leave this madness. Please, don’t harm her.”

The officer gave a disgusted grunt and shook his head. “You’ll never get out of this hellhole, harki boy. Passage is for pied-noirs first. And after tonight, I guarantee you there’ll be a whole mass of them fleeing like scared rabbits.”

They spun on their heels and walked out of the apartment, leaving the door standing wide open.

The next day it rained, a gray, drizzly cold rain that stayed in the bones and caused one to shiver unconsciously. Seated at the table in Marcus Cirou’s dingy, mold-covered kitchen, Moustafa watched the gloomy weather. The entrance door had been forced shut and bandaged, but the wounds were deep in Bab el-Oued. Sipping mint tea, Moustafa brooded while David stared out the single kitchen window onto the street below.

“Quarantined? Is that what Marcus called it?” David asked.

“Yes, for a week. All telephone communications are cut off. The roads are barricaded. The women can leave the house one hour a day to shop for groceries. The French army wants Bab el-Oued to think long and hard before it stages another insurrection.” Moustafa slammed his fist on the table and cursed. “A week! I want Anne-Marie out of here
now
! But as it is, our best chance is for the thirtieth.”

“So we must wait.” David pronounced the words resignedly.