The wound, p.10
The Wound, page 10
And when they ask him for his movement order—it’s an officer who’s ordering him to present it—he hesitates, says to himself he doesn’t know what the man’s rank is, or how you recognize them or what his own rank is for that matter—necessarily the lowest—he thinks the man has a Marseilles accent because we’re near Marseilles. And when the man demands to see his movement order again, he goes livid. He doesn’t know where it is anymore. So he has to run back and find his suitcase. Back to his barracks and the strong, nauseating stench of sweat hits him as he goes in. And also the silence, suddenly the silence he would love to have at night, but will dissipate as the men fill up the room. And as he goes to his bed he worries about finding his suitcase, his things, what if they’d been stolen, what would become of him, what would he be punished for, without papers, without anything to prove his identity, unable to satisfy the officer who’s waiting out there. And when he comes running back to the officer he hardly looks at the paper Bernard holds out to him. He’s given the order to join the two guys who are repainting white lines on the curbs of the sidewalks. They have to be white. Always white, until others come to relieve him.
So he obeys without thinking. He even finds some comfort in doing that. The idiocy of the job, the doggedness you need for it and he finds inside himself to focus on the task, no matter how absurd it is, even if it has to be repeated every hour because every hour the boots leave prints, like skid marks on the freshly painted curbs, not quite dry.
And it must be done again, no big deal, retouch with white, and with the two other guys who’re also on the detail, they walk around all day long with a paint bucket in their hands and their eyes fixed on the curbs of the sidewalks, all around the camp, and the camp is very big, the curbs keep coming, they make arabesques he looks at until he drowns in them, until he can’t see the bustle of the camp around him anymore.
It’s only when one of the two draftees talks about the officer who assigned them to this detail that Bernard raises his head again. He feels embarrassed and silly, and maybe he even blushes at his ignorance when he hears the other guy making fun of the officer’s accent, because the Alsatian accent really is horrible. And he smiles with the two others, says nothing about the accent, so that accent was Alsatian, a long way from Marseilles. At least he knows that, he remembers how far Alsace is from Marseilles, he learned it in school, a long time ago.
In another life.
He holds his paintbrush, leans down, and all day long he keeps repainting over the footprints and the streaks left by shoe rubber. He raises his eyes from time to time, he tells himself it’s better to be busy with his brush and paint than to try to avoid work details and officers. It’ll take as long as it takes, that’s all. That’s something at least, filling the time to get through the day, then through another one, waiting for the evening and another, yet another, before they leave, on the fourth evening.
As if they had to sneak out of France with their suitcases in their hands again and now the additional rolled-up khaki blanket on their shoulder, and find themselves on the docks at night, on a clear but cold evening, ready to get on board.
And now he’s there, on the docks of La Joliette in Marseilles. They chalked the number of his regiment on his helmet. He’s tired, he hasn’t slept. He hopes he’ll get some sleep and yet he still has to bear the fatigue and the agitation around him, in his unit, all the units that are going to board tonight, with only a few idlers who have come to see them off from afar, hardly calling out a few good-byes, like bread crumbs to the fish and birds of the port.
And this time, telling himself he’s going to see the sea, even if it’s at night. Just too bad it has to be at night. He’s going to see the sea and he’s thinking of the first words he’ll write Solange. He tells himself he’ll talk about the size of the ship, a ship so big, he’ll say, that you could almost fit all the people of La Bassée into it. But he won’t talk about the eyes of the men around him, the strange silence that has filled their eyes and, on the boat with them, with the cold air lashing at them, the presence of fear.
But he’ll be able to talk about the seagulls busying themselves around the tugboats like flies around the horses and cows in summer; and he won’t talk about the tension, the panic suddenly in everyone’s eyes, their bodies contracting, their gestures slowing down, their breath held back, when, louder than the voices and shouts of the few men on the docks, even louder than the cries of the gulls—those few gulls gliding over their heads like the little warplanes he saw once in the newsreels—still louder, yes, all the way into your throat, into your head, impossible to say that and even more to write it, he’ll think, not to Solange and not to anyone, when under his feet there is something like a tremor, a movement, voices, and the wind, and the gulls, and he senses a longer, louder sound resonating in the very depths of his being, it seems to him, it even makes his hands sweat and for once he meets the livid gaze of another draftee who, like him, like them, knows that from that moment on, his whole life will be perforated by the sound of the siren announcing their departure.
Night
What happens—first, how very fast the soldiers smash in the doors and charge into the houses with their guns in their hands, the houses so low, so dark it takes time for the eyes to get used to it and find only a few women and old men, sometimes children deep inside the rooms.
Not one able-bodied man.
The soldiers sweep through the village yelling as they run, they yell to buck themselves up, to frighten, like rattling groans, hard breathing, so the old women let go of the baskets they’re weaving and look at the young men, surprised that with guns in their hands they’re the ones who seem frightened. They’re angry, they yell,
Out!
Out!
And in the houses they grab people by the arms, pull on their clothing,
Get out! Get the fuck out!
And the women put down the baskets. They get up. They leave the looms, they walk out, the old men walk out, they don’t know why and their slow steps contradict their obedience, with their raised hands flat on their heads and the barrels of the automatic rifles pushing them towards the center of the village.
The children walk forward too, looking up at the soldiers, their faces are contorted, they’re holding back, fear keeps them from crying.
Children are screaming in front of the door of a house. They remain motionless, two little ones, just standing there, they scream until a woman comes to get them and brings them with her to sit in the town square, squeezed together, all of them, neighbors, friends, all the others, family, all of them, as long as they’re women, old people, children, all huddled together at the level of the soldiers’ legs, with the tips of the barrels dancing before their eyes and the stifling hot dust, thick, white, blurring eyes and smells, and leaving a dry floury taste in the mouth.
Hens cluck across the village square and scrabble around in the dust and dogs are barking, you can hear goats, and the doors being smashed in, women’s screams, a few women locked in or hidden, young women dressed in bright colors, red, blue, yellow, they resist, they have to be pushed, pushed at gun point and you have to yell,
Fuck, move it!
Then bring them back to the square,
Come on!
More violently than the old people because they know something, they know where the men are.
The men, where the hell are the men?
No one can find the men.
The old people don’t talk either, remain silent—only the toothless mouths vibrate and make a lapping sound and splutter, or quiver like the fingers hooked onto the canes that are holding them up. Aside from that the eyes say nothing, nothing, not even astonishment. Not even anger, nothing. Calm, resignation, nothing, patience, perhaps. Some of them saw the bodies after the napalm bombings—the little black heaps of charred bodies with their limbs intact, others had their penis split by electric shocks, they miraculously escaped death, they saw soldiers stone men to death and twelve-year-old girls give themselves to the soldiers without crying; so now they’re not afraid and they wait, patience is on their side.
The lieutenant is talking with Abdelmalik, one of the two harkis. Now he’s bawling at the top of his lungs at those bitches who don’t want to talk, we’ll make them talk, they’ll have to talk, them or the old guys,
Fuck it, they have to talk.
And while he’s yelling and spitting and wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve, they keep searching the houses and forcing open the possible weapons caches, the doors, more doors, a few more, of the houses slightly set back from the street, and from the inside you can hear breaking, things being knocked down, hens run away, goats scatter, maybe there’ll be weapons in the big earthen jars they smash open and only find wheat that spreads over the floor like powder or sand in clouds of yellow dust between the fingers.
Février wants to go into one of the last houses and the door won’t open. It’s resisting. Three or four together, it’s got to give way. And inside there is a woman and a blind old man who jumps when the door gives way and floods the room with light and the soldiers figure right away the old man’s blind because he’s the only one who doesn’t turn his face to them.
But he’s not the one you walk up to. Nor to the woman, who might be the blind man’s daughter, but to the two children, almost not children anymore, a girl and a boy, fourteen or fifteen, not the age of a fellagha yet.
How we know he’s not a fell, how we know what he is, guys?
What are you?
Say it, say what you are.
We asked you a question.
You don’t speak French? No, you don’t understand?
The adolescent doesn’t say anything, he shrinks back slightly, hardly one step, and he looks at the soldiers one after the other. He makes a sign to say he doesn’t understand, he raises his arms and wants to put them on his head, then changes his mind, lowers them down to his body, then, in Arabic, he says words nobody understands. You can feel, you can guess what he means. He must be saying he doesn’t understand and doesn’t know what they’re asking, while his eyes are just saying he’s terrified—and he’s going to try to alleviate his fear by looking at his mother and sister, by looking at the old man. Nobody seems to understand what he’s saying.
Where you hiding weapons?
Where’re you hiding weapons, say it.
The first time they hit him he doesn’t flinch, he barely even starts, or blinks. His voice is shaking, that’s all, to say he doesn’t understand or he’s not hiding anything, or whatever, other words, impossible to make out.
The weapons?
Where are they, say it.
He looks at them and doesn’t answer.
The men, where’re they hiding?
No, he makes a sign to say no.
Where, you know where.
Say it.
He shakes his head to say no.
The fells, you don’t know anything?
There are two soldiers very close to him and they give him little slaps with their fingertips, on his skull, behind his head, on the nape of the neck.
The weapons, where are they?
He closes his eyes, his eyes blink. The sharp sound of slaps. The boy still stands straight. He holds his breath. The sounds of slaps get louder and louder, on the cheeks, on the eyes, on his forehead, he knits his brows, you can see his jaw muscles shuddering, he holds his breath, he makes a gesture of not knowing and he says no with a sharp, nervous movement, like a spasm. He steps back. He spreads out his hands and puts his arms up. They search him and find nothing under his clothing but the trembling of his whole body and the cold sweat on the back of his rigid neck, and as soon as the hitting stops he opens his eyes wide and his breath makes his chest rise and he breathes very loudly through his nose, with his mouth open.
Outside, the sound—they listen—of more doors being kicked in. You can hear the big clay jars thrown down, smashing apart on the ground. And children, babies crying. And dogs barking. Then a shot. They jump. Goats. A dog, someone killed a dog. And they search the adolescent. Then the others. Then someone gropes the girl’s djellaba. Then the girl looks at her mother as her hair escapes from the headscarf that the soldier slides off, and her hair comes undone, falls over her shoulders. Then she opens her mouth as if to express surprise. She clenches her fists. The soldier lingers, searching, groping her breasts for a long time. Mouret and Février watch without saying anything. Then Février walks up to the girl, the other soldier moves over, Février touches the djellaba and stops when the girl lets out a soft cry, almost nothing, and then takes refuge in silence. Her anger must be kept in the background—she knows, she repeats to herself that she can’t lose her head, above all she can’t get mad, she can’t scream, she absolutely can’t scream, can’t insult them, you have to wait, have to keep quiet.
Mouret looks at Février and motions him to drop it.
Février turns away and goes back to the boy,
You don’t want to say anything?
You don’t want to talk? We’ll make you talk, you know we can make you, you know that?
He walks over, he hesitates. He looks the boy in the eyes then spits right next to him. He looks at the boy again, as if he wanted to tell him something, or understand him, or probe into his silence, into his fear, and grab something, read a confession in it, secrets; and he looks at the old man and the woman, but now all he can see is wrinkled, furrowed skin and the man has eyes as dead as his youth.
Then Février gets almost scared and his eyes finally alight on the girl. She’s holding up the top of her djellaba with one hand and with the other she’s trying to hold back her hair. She does not focus on Février’s eyes, nor on the others’. They make the boy put his two hands flat on his skull. He’s crying, silently, the tears fog up his eyes, and flow down his cheeks. There is no revolt or anger in his expression. The blind man does not move at all and neither does the mother, she barely turns her face away, lowers her eyes a little. As for the boy, his wide-open eyes are on the men—eyes open and shining as if they were reflecting a hallucination.
And still from outside you can hear babies crying, another dog barking, women wailing, and then that burnt smell spreading out, and on the square, the cries of the women and the lamentations also floating in the acrid, bitter smell of the black smoke, the smell, the smoke filtering in and soon stinging nostrils and eyes.
The men are going to leave. They are going to go out. Février hesitates and looks at the girl, she can feel it, the others feel it too, the soldiers too. Mouret gives him a punch in the shoulder.
Come on, let’s go.
They walk out. They’re on the doorstep when Nivelle turns around with no warning, a sharp, mechanical movement without thinking it seems, he retraces his steps, a few strides, his body stiff; he walks a few meters and takes his gun out of his belt and without looking without thinking straight ahead walks up to the boy and puts a bullet in his head.
Outside, Février and the others discover the village in flames. The women and the old people are in the middle of the square, while from some burning houses comes the sound of moaning. And all the men and women are sitting next to each other, huddled one against the other, and the women are crying, not all of them, some of them turn around and look at the burning houses, and others are imploring; the men lower their eyes and wait, their hands flat on their heads, they wait and the crying of the women is even more unbearable than the smoke and the fire devastating the houses around them, more unbearable perhaps than the soldiers so close to them, aiming their machine guns at them, and the lieutenant shouting and circling around them, he kicks shoulders, backs, and he orders them to talk, to tell where the able-bodied men are, you know where, the husbands, sons, brothers, of course you know where, since they abandoned you here,
They’re dogs, the lieutenant repeats, dogs because they abandoned you, they knew we’d come and they abandoned you.
And he keeps circling the group of men and women and children, and then soldiers walk between them, step over the bodies, and kick them at random, hard boot-kicks, the women are howling and the children are crying in their arms. They yell they don’t know,
We don’t know anything, the men left so long ago, we don’t know, to the city, to Oran, for work, they left to look for work.
And the lieutenant does not believe them. The soldiers do not believe them. The lieutenant tears a baby from a woman’s arms—at first she resists, she holds the child back, her arms, her hands clinging to the body of the child and a soldier comes to help the lieutenant, pushing away the woman, hitting her on the arms and shoulders with his rifle butt, so she’ll let go, so she’ll give in, and finally she gives in and collapses and the lieutenant takes the baby, he picks it up by the neck with one hand, brandishes it in the air, the old men and the women sit up but the soldiers point their barrels and the lieutenant raises his arm higher still and they can see the baby and the tiny arms, tiny legs kicking around,
His father, where is he, where’s his father?
And the lieutenant keeps standing with his arm up and the child screams and struggles, he looks like he’s swimming, his mother screams, she implores them, she has crawled up to the lieutenant’s feet and wants to hang on to him but the soldier hits her again with his rifle butt, pushes her away, the lieutenant doesn’t see her, he looks at the others in the square, all the others, sitting there, terrified, not daring to move,
Where are they, where are your men?
And he doesn’t wait for an answer, it’s over, he takes out his gun and slaps the mouth of the barrel onto the baby’s temple and a pink mark shows on the temple, deep in it, and the baby screams, the lieutenant looks at the women, at the old men, they say nothing and he looks at the soldiers around him, frozen, very pale too,
