The Mysteries of Algiers (26 page)

‘And what do you do. Monsieur … er …?’ inquires Christa breaking into my reverie.

‘Madame? I? I er … am in pharmaceuticals in Grenoble.’

‘How interesting.’

‘Well, it is kind of you to say so, Christa, but you don’t look as though you mean it. Actually, it is interesting. I am the biggest man in pharmaceuticals in Grenoble. Remember the name – Rouge. And when I say I am the biggest in Grenoble, we are talking about big money here, a pre-tax turnover of around 2 billion francs. Have you ever heard of phylodoxidrine?’

She shakes her head.

‘Very few of your sort of people ever have. But it is a very big seller, especially in Africa, very big in Africa, and it is the taxes on the growing sales of companies like mine which keep the opera and the army going in this part of the world.’

As I keep talking, I notice that Paoli and one of his henchmen have come over to join our group.

‘I have to say though that I’m not sure that we really need an army out here. Speaking as a major tax-payer, I can tell you that it seems a disproportionate fiscal burden and, speaking as a big exporter to Africa, I can tell you that we have been pleasantly surprised how much our sales have shot up in our former colonies since independence. Under the old regime there were a lot of restrictive regulations that really were getting in the way of efficient pricing and distribution of our drugs. So the message is – the colonists can go and we can still clean up on the profits.’

Paoli looks murderous. I turn to face him directly.

‘We see very good prospects in the Congo, now that the Belgians are pulling out. Generally, we see a lot of possibilities in the newly emergent nations of Africa … If my company’s experience in Senegal is anything to go by, one can get away with murder in these People’s Cannibal Republics. Well, not murder, but marketing contraceptives as virility pills and …’

Someone has started to play the ‘Tarnhelm’ motif from
Rheingold
on the piano and Christa drifts off in that direction. Paoli is whispering to his side-kick. The man has a vaguely military appearance. I prod the side-kick in the chest with my finger.

‘One does not find the real buccaneers of our time in the ranks of the Foreign Legion or the Paratroops, for all their smartly tailored uniforms. No, indeed. Today’s adventurers are going into the front line of the developing new technologies. Pharmaceuticals is one of them and I’m proud of my role in that industry.’

I am talking more and more loudly. But it is no use. They are not listening to me. I am effectively talking to myself. I return to my gin and to contemplation of the staircase – the murky ascent to the scaffold of a death-in-love summation – killed by the woman I love – effectively the auto-execution of the terrorist. Crap, all crap. I don’t want to die. I am too useful to the revolution. If I do have a death wish, it takes the form of wishing all oppressors and collaborators were dead. But now, as I look around the room, it strikes me that these people had their chance with Hitler and Mussolini and they muffed it. As for neo-fascism, ‘the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce’. Looking at the Children of Vercingetorix scattered round the room, I am struck more powerfully than before by their preposterous appearance. They are the amateurs of revolution. History is not travelling in their direction and in the deepest recesses of their shrivelled hearts they know it.

Atrocity is no longer the monopoly of the Junker and the Nazi and the owner of slaves and plantations. For, in my time, the politically mobilized working class and the freedom fighters of Africa and Asia have learned to make much more effective use of terrorism and torture than these played-out reactionaries ever could. And indeed the jokers in this room are not the real enemy. The real enemy is Monsieur Rouge, who is so big in pharmaceuticals in Grenoble, and his friend Monsieur Jaune, the technocrat in one of the Paris ministries, and Monsieur Bleu, the leader of the Farmer’s Union, and Monsieur Vert, the Left Bank novelist they all read, and the vast mass of busy lawyers, doctors, publishers, journalists, librarians and undertakers who toil for the repressive democracies of the Western world. The structures of oppression are indeed diffuse and subtle.

It follows that Chantal is a glamorous irrelevance. I am getting out of here. I am not going to be redeemed by the love of a bad woman after all. I signal Nounourse over and together we confront Paoli.

‘It has been wonderful talking to your guests. So sorry not to be able to thank our host, but we must be going now.’

‘But you have only just arrived. I hope you are feeling all right?’

‘I’m feeling fine – only just a little bored that’s all. But thank you for having done me the honour of receiving me in the de Serkissian home.’

If Nounourse had not been standing beside me, I think Paoli might have declined to shake my proferred hand. I walk over to Christa Mannerling to say goodbye to her too. I offer to send her a free sample of my company’s slimming pills. Then, ‘Come on, Nounourse. Let’s go.’

This winter the French lost the game in Algeria. In two years, three years at the most, they will be ceding independence and pulling out. I think that tomorrow I shall go down to the office of the Compagnie Transatlantique … I think we may go to Cuba – or perhaps the Congo.

‘Find the umbrella, Nounourse.’

But Nounourse is blocking my way. I should have realized that he was going to be more trouble than he was worth.

‘Captain Addict, I did not come here to drink fruit juice or to listen to your joking with your white friends.’ Nounourse is whispering, but his thunderous whispering can surely be heard by Paoli and half the people in the room behind us. ‘Are you a legionnaire or are you chicken? What is with you? Your Chantal must die and I came here to fix it for her. Now I am going to do it and you are going to help me do it. We go upstairs together now, or I shoot you dead here on the spot.’

There is no time and this is not the place for me to argue with Nounourse. I have only just understood myself how irrelevant killing her will be.

‘Enough. Let’s get out of here, Nounourse. Something is wrong. Where is Chantal? Where is Maurice? It all feels wrong.’

‘We will find her upstairs and then we will kill her.’

So we stand, glaring at one another, when I hear a shout from behind me.

‘Captain Roussel – that is you with the beard, isn’t it? – it is I who ask you to stay.’

The shout has come from halfway across the room and the voice is that of Maurice. Paoli who had been standing with the door open for our exit now closes it again. The guests part between us and Maurice crooks his finger summoning us to him. We go towards him, but, before we are close, he gestures with his head towards the stair.

‘You are needed up there. My daughter needs you now. Please, now go up.’

There is something in his voice I can’t quite make out. Menacing, of course, but perhaps wheedling too?

‘Go up. It seems that you are expected. In the name of God, hurry!’

I look at Nounourse. Is he in on this too? But he looks baffled and terrified. We ascend the staircase. Maurice and Paoli watch us from the foot of the stairs. Why don’t they shoot us now? Or must it be done upstairs, out of sight of the guests? Indeed, there is a Corsican with a rifle at the head of the stairs and I see another, similarly armed, at the far end of the corridor. The nearer ’of the two guards inclines his head to us.

‘Her bedroom is over there, but you must knock before you enter.’ And he motions us past.

Clearly everything is wrong, but I see no way of walking out of this trap. Nounourse has lost his confidence and he makes me knock upon the door while he flattens himself against the wall and his head turns from one Corsican to the other. A strange mewing sound comes from beyond the door. I take it that we are to enter. The bedroom is mostly in darkness, but a table lamp illuminates something shaking under the blankets on the bed. Nounourse covers me with his gun while I walk over to strip the blanket away. The mewing noise redoubles in volume. It is made by the bloody thing on the bed, a body that is swathed in silk streaked in red. I cannot understand it. Raoul comes in from the bathroom and he says something to us, but I am not taking it in, for I am slowly coming to interpret and to understand what it is that I am looking at. Chantal’s eyelids are fluttering up and down at a fantastic rate. I am looking at Chantal, but she does not look like Chantal.

‘… and there is no point in talking to her. She can’t talk back.’ Raoul is in a sports jacket and he carries a gun, but he regards Nounourse with a friendly eye and it is clear that there will be no shoot-out in this room.

‘Are those gumen still posted on the corridor? Is that really the party I hear downstairs? Incredible. You took your time. Who is this gorilla? I take it that he is your man? I’ve been here over three hours now, but I waited, certain that you would be coming. I told Maurice that I was sure that you would be coming and I told him – yes, I ordered him – to send you up when you came.’

Despite his casual dress, Raoul himself is far from casual. He is sweaty and he gabbles. The holes in his face seem to dilate. Nothing makes any sense to me. I go and sit down with my back against the wall. Then I ask him to explain himself.

‘When we met on the quayside and you took my invitation card from me, it was not difficult for me to work out what you wanted it for and what you were going to do to Chantal. Then I began to reflect on Chantal and her values and then I thought about Anne Frank and her values. (I told you that I had been reading her
Diary,
didn’t I?) Then I thought about your values and what you are trying to do in the world. Everything passed in a dream, as I came to examine my own values – prejudices, as I now regard them – and I realized that I had only been using sophistry to defend the interests of my class formation. Then I went back over the arguments we had at Laghouat and I realized that you were right about the labour theory of value! It was a wonderful moment for me. I now understand that labour cannot have two values, one for the labourer and one for the capitalist who employs him. (We are talking about the capitalist’s margin of profit here, are we not?) As Engels says, “Turn and twist as we will, we cannot get out of this contradiction, as long as we speak of the purchase and sale of labour and the value of labour.” No, what we should be talking about is the sale and purchase of labour
power.
Labour
power
–’

‘Shut up, Raoul. Never mind all that. Tell me what you are doing here.’

Now Nounourse, who has been paying no attention to us but has been standing over the bed, looking down saucer-eyed at Chantal, raises his head, curious to see how this madman will explain himself. Raoul smiles at Nounourse and me, seeming to wish to offer us some faint reassurance.

‘You are right, of course. However, the point is that everything follows from the labour theory of value. It is the lynchpin of Marxist theory. Everything follows from that, as in a very beautifully constructed piece of –’

‘Enough of that, Raoul.’

‘I am simply trying to tell you that I am on your side. “Things are as they are and their consequences will be what they will be. Why then should we wish to be deceived?” Marxism is true and, as you should know, for me, if a thing is true, it is true to the limit. I now saw that forgiveness for Chantal was out of the question. She is the enemy and I also realized that I wanted to make contact with you again. There was only one place I could be sure that I would find you at. So I came here at the beginning of the evening and I brought a gun and a cut-throat razor with me. I have not killed her, for I thought we might need her to get out of this place. So here I have been these last three hours. We have been arguing, but I always had the gun on her. A bit like Laghouat really, but different.’

He laughs reminiscently.

‘Occasionally I have had a little chat with Maurice and his men. As I say, I told him to expect you and let you through.’

Here Nounourse interrupts. Nounourse is having difficulty with all this.

‘You have cut out her tongue?’

Raoul is looking at me for approval.

‘She was talking that old fascist propaganda. She will never change. So just now I cut it out. I find that I no longer have my old nose for political debate. The tongue is a slippery thing to get hold of and it was a messier business than I expected. As you see, there is a lot of blood, but she is in no danger of dying. Anyway. I didn’t want to hear more of her. I have long thought that there is such a thing as repressive tolerance and, as I see it now, freedom for her and her father and her father’s friends to talk is freedom to talk their way into doing other people down. I don’t want to hear any of the old siren songs. Imperialist and racist ideas do not deserve a voice. The time for debate is over. It is time to act!’

Nounourse’s face lights up and, catching Nounourse’s expression of approval, Raoul gestures grandly with the razor.

‘Now, shall we make Cleopatra’s nose shorter and change the face of the world?’

Nounourse has never heard of Cleopatra. As for me, I am not sure that I do approve. The ruthlessness, yes. But this melodramatic private vengeance, this posturing and all this over-excitement on the part of a new convert … His nervy jokes … I am not sure. But it hardly matters now. Raoul is right when he says that it is time to act.

‘Forget it. How do we get out of here?’

‘My car is outside. We walk out with Chantal. Very difficult for them with all these people around. I told Maurice not to cancel his little soirée. They will not dare touch us as long as we have her. We drive around until we have shaken any tail they put on us. After that I am not sure.’

‘So let’s get moving then.’

Raoul and I help Chantal get dressed, while Nounourse prudishly turns his back to us. She is shivering, very cold, but with a high feverish pulse. I kiss her firmly compressed lips. Raoul looks at me strangely, but there is nothing sexual in this kiss. I was never really in love with Chantal. That was not possible for me. Engels was right when he said, ‘Sexual love in a man’s relation to woman becomes and can become the rule among the oppressed class alone, among the proletarians.’ I work for the love of the proletariat, but I know that I shall never experience that love myself. I see things as they are. I kiss with my eyes open. I am kissing not a woman, but a mutilated figure, the embodiment of all the casualties that have happened and that will happen in this war in Algeria. Her eyes are wonderful nightmare eyes.