Total Chaos (7 page)

He went on strike with the CGT, occupied the site, fought the riot police who came to dislodge them. They'd lost, of course. You can never win against the arbitrary decisions of the men in suits. Driss had just been born. Fatima was dead. And Mouloud had a police record now as an agitator, and couldn't get any real work. Just little jobs. Right now, he was a packer at Carrefour. Minimum wage, after all these years. But, as he said, ‘it was an opportunity.' Mouloud was like that, he believed in France.

Mouloud had told me his life story in my office at the station house one evening. He told it proudly. He wanted me to understand. Leila was with him. That was two years ago. I'd taken Driss and Kader in for questioning. A few hours before, Mouloud had bought some batteries for the transistor his children had given him. The batteries didn't work. Kader went down to the drugstore on the boulevard to change them. Driss went with him.

“You don't know how to use them, that's all.”

“Yes I do,” Kader replied. “It isn't the first time.”

“You Arabs always think you know everything.”

“It's not very polite of you to say that, madame.”

“I'm polite when I want to be. But not to filthy Arabs like you. You're wasting my time. Take your batteries. They're old ones, anyhow, and you didn't buy them here.”

“My dad bought them here earlier.”

Her husband came out of the back of the store with a hunting rifle. “Tell your lying father to come here, and I'll make him swallow his batteries.” He threw the batteries on the floor. “Get out of here, you sons of bitches!”

Kader pushed Driss out of the store. After that, things happened very fast. Driss, who hadn't said a word so far, picked up a big stone and threw it at the window. He ran off, followed by Kader. The guy came out of the store and fired at them, but missed. Ten minutes later, a hundred kids were besieging the drugstore. It took more than two hours, and a van of riot police, to restore calm. Nobody dead, nobody injured. But I was furious. Part of my mission was to avoid calling in the riot police. No riots, no provocation, and above all no mistakes.

I'd listened to the druggist.

“Too many Arabs. That's the problem.”

“They're here. You didn't bring them. Neither did I. But they're here, and we have to live with them.”

“Are you on their side?”

“Don't be a pain in the ass, Varounian. They're Arabs. You're an Armenian.”

“And proud of it. You have something against Armenians?”

“No. Nothing against Arabs either.”

“Yeah, and what's the result? Have you been downtown lately? I have. It's like Algiers or Oran. Stinks just the same.” I let him talk. “Before, you bumped into an Arab on the street, he'd say sorry. Now he wants you to say sorry. They're arrogant, that's what they are! Shit, they think this is their home!”

I didn't want to listen anymore, or even argue. It sickened me. I'd heard it all before. The local far-right newspaper
Le Méridional
printed hateful crap like that every day.
Sooner or later
, they'd written once,
the riot police and their dogs will have to be called in to destroy the casbahs of Marseilles...
One thing was sure: if nothing was done, all hell was going to break loose. I didn't have any solutions. Neither did anyone else. We just had to wait and not resign ourselves. Wager on Marseilles surviving this latest racial mix and being reborn. Marseilles had seen it all before.

I'd sent them all on their different ways, with fines for ‘public disorder' preceded by a little moral tirade. Varounian was the first to leave.

“We'll get you and cops like you,” he said as he opened the door. “Soon. When we're in power.”

“Goodbye, Monsieur Varounian,” Leila replied, disdainfully.

He gave her a filthy look. I wasn't sure, but I thought I heard him mutter the word ‘bitch' under his breath. I smiled at Leila. A few days later, she called me at the precinct house to thank me and to invite me to have tea with them on Sunday. I accepted. I liked Mouloud.

Now, Driss was an apprentice in a garage on Rue Roger Salengro. Kader was in Paris, working in his uncle's grocery store on Rue de Charonne. Leila was at college, in Aix-en-Provence, and was just completing a master's in French language and literature. Mouloud was happy again. His children were settling down. He was proud of them, especially his daughter. I understood how he felt. Leila was intelligent, confident and beautiful. The image of her mother, Mouloud had told me. And he'd showed me a photo of Fatima, Fatima and him in the Vieux Port. Their first day together in years. He'd gone to Algeria to fetch her, to bring her over to Paradise.

Mouloud opened the door. His eyes were red.

“She's disappeared. Leila's disappeared.”

 

Mouloud made tea. He hadn't heard from Leila in three days. That wasn't like her, I knew. Leila respected her father. He didn't like her to wear jeans or smoke or drink aperitifs, and told her so. They'd argue about it, shout at each other, but he never imposed his ideas on her. He trusted her. That was why he'd allowed her to take a room at the university residence in Aix. To be independent. She phoned every two days and came to see him on Sundays. Often, she slept over. Driss left her the couch in the living room and slept with his father.

The thing that made Leila's silence worrying was that she hadn't even called to tell him if she'd gained her master's or not.

“Maybe she failed, and she feels ashamed... She's in her room, crying. She doesn't dare come back.”

“Maybe.”

“You should go find her, Monsieur Montale. Tell her it doesn't matter.”

He didn't believe a word he was saying. Neither did I. If she'd failed her master's, she'd have cried, sure. But hiding away in her room, no, I couldn't believe that. Plus, I was convinced she'd gained her master's.
Poetry and the Need for Identity
, her thesis was called. I'd read it two weeks earlier. I'd thought it was a remarkable piece of work. But I wasn't one of the judges, and Leila was an Arab.

She'd taken her inspiration from a Lebanese writer named Salah Stetie and had developed some of his ideas. Her concern was to build bridges between East and West, across the Mediterranean. She pointed out, for example, that Sinbad the Sailor in the
Arabian Nights
recalled certain elements of Ulysses in the
Odyssey
, especially his ingenuity and his mischievousness.

What I liked most was her conclusion. As a child of the East, she considered that the French language was becoming a place where the migrant could draw together strands from all the lands through which he had passed and finally feel at home. The language of Rimbaud, Valéry and René Char would crossbreed, she asserted. It was the dream of a generation of North African immigrants. You already heard a strange kind of French spoken in Marseilles, a mixture of Provençal, Italian, Spanish and Arabic, with bits of slang thrown in. Speaking it, the kids understood each other perfectly well. At least on the streets. At school and at home, it was another story.

The first time I went to see her at college, I found the walls covered with racist graffiti. Insulting, obscene graffiti. I'd stopped in front of the most laconic:
Arabs and blacks out!
I'd assumed the law faculty, some five hundred yards from there, was the fascist stronghold, but clearly, human stupidity had reached French language and literature now! In case anyone hadn't gotten the point, someone had added:
Jews too
.

“It can't be a pleasant atmosphere to work in,” I said to her.

“I don't see them anymore.”

“Yes, but they're in your head, aren't they?”

She shrugged, lit a Camel, then took me by the arm and led me out of there.

“One day we'll get people to take our rights seriously. I vote, and that's the reason why. And I'm not the only one anymore.”

“Your rights, maybe. But you'll still have the same face.”

She turned to look at me, with a smile on her lips and a gleam in her dark eyes. “Oh, yeah? What's wrong with my face? Don't you like it?”

“It's a very nice face,” I stammered.

She looked like Maria Schneider in
Last Tango in Paris
. Same round face, same long, curly hair, only hers was black. Like her eyes, which were looking deep into mine. I went red.

I'd seen a lot of Leila these last few years. I knew more about her than her father did. We got into the habit of having lunch together once a week. She talked to me about her mother, who she'd barely known. She missed her. Time didn't help. In fact, it only made it worse. Every year, when Driss's birthday came around, all four of them had to find a way of getting through it.

“I think that's why Driss has become, not bad exactly, but aggressive. Because of that curse. He has hatred in him. One day, my father said to me, ‘If I'd had a choice, I'd have chosen your mother.' He said it to me, because I was the only one who could understand.”

“You know, my father said that too. But my mother pulled through. And here I am. An only child. It can be lonely.”

“Death is a lonely business.” She smiled. “It's the title of a novel. Have you read it?”

I shook my head.

“It's by Ray Bradbury. A detective story. I'll lend it to you. You ought to read more contemporary novels.”

“They don't interest me. They lack style.”

“This is Bradbury, Fabio!”

“OK, maybe Bradbury.”

And we'd launch into long discussions about literature. The future teacher and the self-taught cop. The only books I'd read were those we'd been given by old Antonin. Adventure stories, travel books. Poetry, too. Long forgotten Marseilles poets like Émile Sicard, Toursky, Gérald Neveu, Gabriel Audisio, and my favorite, Louis Brauquier.

The weekly lunch wasn't enough anymore, and we started meeting one or two evenings a week. Whenever I wasn't on duty, or she wasn't baby-sitting. I'd go to fetch her in Aix, and we'd take in a movie, then go have dinner somewhere.

We launched on a major survey of foreign cuisines. Considering the number of restaurants between Aix and Marseilles, it was likely to take us many months. We gave stars to those we liked, black marks to those we didn't. Top of our list was the Mille et une nuits, on Boulevard d'Athenes. You sat on pouffes and ate from a big brass platter, listening to raï. Moroccan cuisine. The most refined in North Africa. They served the best pigeon
pastilla
I've ever tasted.

That evening, I'd suggested Les Tamaris, a little Greek restaurant in a
calanque
called Samena, not far from my house. It was hot, with a thick, dry heat, typical of late August. We ordered simple things: cucumber salad with yoghurt, stuffed vine leaves, taramasalata, spicy kebabs grilled on vine shoots with a drizzle of olive oil, goat's cheese. All washed down with a white Retsina.

We walked on the little shingly beach, then sat down on the rocks. It was a glorious night. In the distance, the Planier lighthouse revealed the cape. Leila laid her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled of honey and spices. She slipped her arm beneath mine and took my hand. I shivered at the contact. I wasn't quick enough to free myself from her grip. She began reciting a poem by Brauquier, in Arabic.

 

The shadows and the mystery are gone,

The spirit fled, and we are poor again;

And only sin can give us back the earth,

That makes our bodies move and sigh and strain.

 

“I translated it for you. I wanted you to hear it in my language.”

Part of that language was her voice. A voice as sweet as halva. I was moved. I turned my face to her, slowly, so that her head stayed on my shoulder and I could get drunk on her smell. I saw a glimmer in her dark eyes, the reflection of the moon on the water. I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her close and kiss her.

I was well aware, and so was she, that our increasingly frequent encounters had been leading up to this moment, and it was a moment I dreaded. I knew my own desires only too well. I knew how it would all end. In bed, then in tears. I'd never known anything but failures, one after the other. I was looking for a woman, and I had to find her, if she existed. But Leila wasn't her. She was so young, and what I felt for her was only desire. I had no right to play with her. With her feelings. She was too good for that. I kissed her on the forehead. I felt her hand caress my thigh.

“Will you take me home with you?”

“I'll take you back to Aix. I think that's best for both of us. I'm just an old fool.”

“I like old fools.”

“Let it go, Leila. Find someone who isn't a fool. Someone younger.”

On the drive back, I kept my eyes on the road. We didn't look at each other once. Leila was smoking. I'd put on a Calvin Russel tape that I liked a lot. It was good to drive to. If I could, I'd have crossed the whole of Europe rather than take the turnoff that led to Aix. Russel was singing
Rockin' the Republicans
. Leila, still without speaking, stopped the tape before
Baby I Love You
.

She put in another tape that I didn't know. Arab music. An oud solo. The music she had dreamed of for this night with me. The sound of the oud spread through the car like an aroma. The peaceful aroma of an oasis. Dates, dried figs, almonds. I risked a look at her. Her skirt had ridden up her thighs. She was beautiful, beautiful for me. Yes, I desired her.

“You shouldn't have done it,” she said just before she got out.

“Shouldn't have done what?”

“Let me fall in love with you.”

She slammed the car door. Not violently. But there was sadness in the action, and the anger that goes with sadness. That was a year ago. We hadn't seen each other since. She hadn't called. I'd brooded over her absence. Two weeks ago, I'd received her master's thesis in the mail, and a card with just four words: “For you. So long.”