What the day owes the nigth

4. Aix-en-Provence (Present Day)

‘MONSIEUR . . .’

The angelic face of the air hostess smiles at me. Why is she smiling at me? Where am I? I must have dozed off. After a moment of hesitation I realise I am on a plane, white as an operating theatre, and the clouds I can see flashing past the window are not some glimpse of the hereafter. And it all comes back to me: Émilie is dead. She passed away on Monday in Aix-en-Provence hospital. Fabrice Scamaroni had phoned a week ago to let me know.

‘Could you bring your seat back up, monsieur, we’re about to land . . .’

The gentle voice of the flight attendant echoes dully in my mind. What seat? My neighbour, a teenage boy in a hooded top emblazoned with the colours of the Algerian football team, points to a button on the armrest and helps me adjust my seat.

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘No problem, Grandad. You live in Marseille?’

‘No.’

‘My cousin’s picking me up at the airport. We can give you a lift somewhere If you like.’

‘That’s very kind, but there’s no need. There’s someone meeting me.’

I look at his head, bizarrely shaved to conform to some curious fashion, with a single tuft of hair at the front held upright by a thick layer of gel.

‘You scared of flying?’ he asks me.

‘Not particularly.’

‘My dad can’t even watch a plane land; he puts his hands over his eyes.’

‘That bad, really?’

‘You don’t know my dad. We live on the ninth floor of Jean de la Fontaine, the housing estate in Gambetta in Oran, you know it? Those huge tower blocks facing away from the sea. Anyway, nine times out of ten my dad won’t even take the lift – even though he’s pretty old, he’s, like, fifty-eight and he’s had prostate surgery.’

‘Fifty-eight isn’t all that old.’

‘Yeah, I know, but where I come from we don’t say dad, we say the old man . . . How old are you, Grandad?’

‘I was born so long ago I’ve forgotten.’

The plane is swallowed up by thick cloud, there is a flurry of turbulence and it goes into a nosedive. The boy next to me pats the back of my hand, which is clutching the armrest:

‘Don’t worry, Grandad, it’s like we’ve come off the motorway on to a back road. It’ll be fine in a minute. Flying is the safest way to travel.’

I look out of the window, watch the fleecy clouds become an avalanche, then mist, thinning out only to reappear thicker than ever, then disappear again. The blue sky returns, scuffed with frayed streaks of white. Why have I come here? I hear my uncle’s voice above the roar of the engines: If you wantyour life to be a small part of eternity, to be lucid even in the heart of madness, love . . . Love with all your strength, love as though it is all you know how to do, love enough to make the gods themselves jealous . . . for it is in love that all ugliness reveals its beauty. These were my uncle’s last words, the words he said to me on his deathbed in Río Salado. Even now, half a century later, his cracked voice still rings in my head like a prophecy: A man who passes over the great love of his life will only be as old as his regrets, and all the sighing in the world will not be enough to soothe his soul. Is it to disprove this truth or to face it that I have come so far? The plane wheels and turns and suddenly, out of nowhere, I see France. My heart stutters, and an invisible hand closes around my throat. It is so intense that I can feel my fingers ripping through the fabric of the armrest. Now I see rocky mountain peaks reflecting the sunlight, perpetual, implacable sentinels that keep watch over the shore, indifferent to the raging sea that dashes itself against the cliffs at their feet. Then, as the plane wheels, Marseille . . . like a vestal virgin lazing in the sun. Sprawled over the hillsides, radiant, dazzling, her navel bared, hip exposed to the four winds, she pretends to sleep, pretends not to notice the murmur of the waves and the whispers that drift in from the hinterland. Marseille, the legendary city, the land of titans, the landing place of the gods of Olympus, the crossroads of lost horizons, manifold because she is boundless in her generosity; Marseille, my last battlefield, where I finally had to lay down my arms, crushed by my inability to accept a challenge, to be worthy of my own happiness.

Here, in this city, the miraculous is a state of mind, the sun illuminates all consciences willing to take the trouble to unbolt their hidden trapdoors. It was here that I realised the extent of the pain I had caused, pain I have never forgiven myself. Forty-five years ago I came to this city to find the broken shards of my destiny, to try to put them back together, fill in the missing pieces, tend to the cracks, to make amends to fortune for failing to seize my chance when I had it, for having doubted, for having chosen to be prudent when it was offering me her heart; to beg for forgiveness in the name of that which God places above all accomplishments and all misfortunes: love. I came here distraught, uncertain but sincere, in search of redemption, mine first and foremost, but also that of those I still loved, despite the hatred that had come between us, the greyness that had clouded our summers. I still remember this port, its flickering lights welcoming steamships from Oran, the darkness that shrouded the quays, the shadows on the gangways. I can still see clearly the face of the customs officer with his curly moustache who asked me to empty my pockets and stand with my hands up like a criminal; the policeman who obviously disapproved of his colleague’s zeal; the taxi driver who drove me to my hotel and swore at me because I slammed the car door too hard; the woman at the reception desk who had me wait half the night while she checked to see if there was a room available somewhere nearby, because I had failed to confirm my reservation . . . It was a terrible night in March 1964. The mistral howled and a coppery sky growled thunderously. My room had no heating. Though I rolled myself up in the blankets in search of a glimmer of warmth, I was freezing. The window creaked with every gust of wind. On the bedside table, faintly lit by an anaemic lamp, was my leather bag. Inside it was a letter from André Sosa:

Dear Jonas,

I’ve done what you asked and found Émilie. It took a long time, but I’m glad I’ve found her. Glad for you. She works as a secretary to a lawyer in Marseille. I tried to call her, but she refused to speak to me!! I’m not sure why. We were never really close, or at least not close enough to have fallen out. Maybe she mistook me for someone else. The war swept away so many of the country’s points of reference that I sometimes wonder if what we went through was not just some group hallucination. But let’s leave time to do its mourning. The wounds are still too fresh to insist that those who survived show restraint . . . Émilie’s address is: 143, Rue des Frères-Julien. It’s not far from La Canebière, you’ll find it easily. Her building is opposite a café called Le Palmier, which is pretty well known. It’s where all the pieds-noirs go now. Can you imagine, that’s what they call us these days – ‘pieds-noirs’ – as though we’ve spent our whole lives trudging through mud . . .

Call me when you get to Marseille. It would be wonderful to see you and give you a kick up the backside.

Much love, Dédé.

The Rue des Frères-Julien was five blocks from my hotel. The taxi driver took me on a scenic trip for half an hour before dropping me off outside Le Palmier. The café was heaving. After the storm the previous night, Marseille glittered in the sunshine, light dappling the faces of the people. Wedged between two modern structures, number 143 was an old building of faded green with ramshackle windows and rickety shutters; a few flower pots bravely attempted to liven up the balconies shaded by drooping awnings. It had a curious effect on me. It was as drab and gloomy as though it repelled the sunlight, despised the exuberance of the street. I found it difficult to imagine Émilie laughing, smiling behind those dreary windows.

I took a table by the window in the café so that I could watch the coming and going opposite. It was a glorious Sunday – the rain had scoured the pavements clean and the streets were steaming. Around me, people with nothing better to do than set the world to rights over glasses of red wine; their accents were those of the Algerian suburbs, their faces were weathered still by the southern sun, they rolled their Rs with relish like stirring couscous. Though the conversations ranged across the planet, they invariably circled back to Algeria. It was all they could talk about.

‘You know what I keep thinking, Juan? I keep thinking about the omelette I forgot on the cooker while I was rushing to pack my suitcase and get out of there. I’m wondering whether the house burned to the ground after.’

‘Are you serious, Roger?’

‘Of course I’m serious. You’re always banging on about all the things you had to leave back in the bled. You never talk about anything else.’

‘What do you want me to talk about? Algeria is my whole life.’

‘In that case, why don’t you drop dead and give me a bit of fucking peace? I’ve got other things to think about.’

At the bar, three drunks in Basque berets were drinking to their wild life as young men in Bab el-Oued. They were doing their best to be quiet, but people could hear them on the far side of the street. Next to me, twin brothers talked in thick, slurred voice over a table covered with empty beer bottles and full ashtrays. Their swarthy faces reminded me of the fishermen in Algiers in their faded sweaters, unlit cigarette butts dangling from their lips.

‘I told you she was just using you, little brother. The girls here aren’t like they are back home. Back home women respect men, they won’t let you down. Anyway, I can’t think what you saw in that frigid bitch. I feel cold just thinking about you with her. And she couldn’t cook . . .’

I drank three or four cups of coffee, never taking my eyes from the door of 143. Then I had lunch. No sign of Émilie. The drunks at the bar had left; so had the twins. The chatter and the noise died away a little, only to pick up again when a group of half-drunk friends piled in. The waiter broke a couple of glasses, then spilled a carafe of water over a customer who took this as an opportunity to tell anyone who would listen exactly what he thought of Le Palmier, of pieds-noirs, of Marseille, of France, of Europe, of Arabs, of Jews, of the Portuguese and of his own family, ‘a bunch of selfish hypocrites’, who hadn’t been able to find a wife for him even though he was about to turn forty. Everyone waited until he had spewed all the bile he had to spew, then he was politely asked to leave.

The day was drawing in; night was preparing to besiege the city. Every bone in my body was starting to ache from sitting waiting in the corner, when finally she appeared from the door of 143. She had no hat, her hair was piled into a chignon, she wore a raincoat with a flared collar and boots that came up to her thighs. Hands in her pockets, clearly in a hurry to be somewhere, she looked like a schoolgirl off to play with her friends.

I left all the change I had in the bread basket the waiter had forgotten to clear away and rushed to catch her up.

Suddenly I felt scared. Did I have the right to intrude in her life? Had she forgiven me?

Desperate to drown out the questions in my head, I heard myself call out: ‘Émilie!’

She stopped abruptly, as though she had met an invisible wall. She must have recognised my voice, because her shoulders tensed and she drew her head in. She did not turn. She listened for a moment and then walked on.

‘Émilie!’

This time she turned so quickly that she almost fell. Her eyes shimmered, her face was pale, but she quickly composed herself, choking back her tears. I smiled stupidly at her, having no idea what else to do. What would I say to her? Where could I begin? I had been in such a hurry to see her again that I not thought what I might do when I found her.

Émilie stared at me, wondering if I were really flesh and blood.

‘It’s me.’

‘And . . . ?’

Her face was a mask of bronze, a cloudy mirror; I could never have believed she could react to my presence with such indifference.

‘I’ve looked for you everywhere.’

‘Why?’

The question caught me unawares. I lost the power of speech. How could she not see what was staring her in the face? I was reeling, like a punch-drunk boxer. I was dumbstruck. I did not know what to do now.

‘What do you mean, why?’ I heard myself stammer. ‘The only reason I am here is because of you.’

‘We said everything we had to say back in Oran.’

She was perfectly still, only her lips moved.

‘Things were different in Oran.’

‘Oran, Marseille, it’s all the same.’

‘You know that’s not true, Émilie. The war is over, life goes on.’

‘For you, maybe . . .’

I was sweating now.

‘I really thought that—’

‘Then you were wrong.’ She cut me off.

Her coldness froze my thoughts, my words, my soul.

‘Émilie . . . tell me what I have to do, but please, don’t look at me like that. I’d give anything to—’

‘You can only give what you have. Sometimes not even that, and you don’t have anything . . . Besides, what good would it do? We can’t solve the problems of the world, and it has taken much more from me than it can ever repay.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘They’re just words. I think I told you that before.’

My grief was such that it filled my whole being; there was no room left for anger or resentment.

Against all expectations, her dark look softened and her features relaxed. She stared at me for a long time as though she were going far back into the past to find me. Finally she came towards me, her perfume hanging heavy in the air. She took my face in her hands the way my mother used to do to kiss me on the forehead. Émilie did not kiss me on the forehead, or on the cheek; she simply stared at me. Her breath mingled with mine. I wanted her to hold my face like this until the Last Judgement.

‘Nobody is to blame, Younes. You don’t owe me anything. It’s just the way the world is, and I don’t want that any more.’

She turned and walked away.

I stood on the pavement, speechless, frozen, and watched her walk out of my life.

It was the last time I ever saw her.

That night I took the boat back to Algeria, and not until today did I set foot in France again.

I wrote letters to her, sent her cards for her birthday and every holiday . . . Not once did she reply. I told myself she had moved, that she had gone away, as far away as she could from her memories of me, and that perhaps it was for the best. I missed her terribly, thought about the life we might have made together, the wounds we might have healed and those that would have healed themselves in time, the old demons we would have exorcised. Émilie had nothing she wanted to save, no page to turn, no pain she needed to grieve over. The few moments she had granted me on that pavement beneath the blazing sun had been enough for me to realise that there are doors that, once they close upon some sorrow, become an abyss that even the light of heaven cannot penetrate. For a long time I suffered over Émilie; I felt her pain, her self-denial, her decision to live shut up in her own tragedy. Later I tried to forget her, hoping to temper the pain in both of us. I had to accept it, had to confront what my heart stubbornly refused to face. Life is a train that stops at no stations; you either jump aboard or stand on the platform and watch as it passes, and there is nothing sadder than an abandoned station. Was I happy after that? I think so. I experienced moments of pleasure, moments of unforgettable joy; I loved again and dreamed again like a wide-eyed boy. And yet I always felt that there was something missing, something that left me somehow crippled, in short that I only ever hovered on the fringes of happiness.

The plane lands on the tarmac in a roar of the reverse thrust of the engines. The boy next to me points to the planes waiting to take off. Over the speakers, a flight attendant’s voice tells us the temperature outside, the local time, and thanks us for choosing Air Algérie, before insisting that we remain seated with our seat belts fastened until the plane comes to a complete stop.

The teenager carries my hand luggage and gives it back to me when we reach immigration. After the official formalities, he points me to the exit, apologising that he has to wait for his luggage.

The frosted glass door into the arrivals hall slides back. Behind the yellow line, people are waiting impatiently to recognise a familiar face among the stream of arriving passengers. A little girl lets go her of father’s hand, runs up and throws herself into the arms of a granny wearing a djellaba. A young woman is plucked from the crowd by her husband, who kisses her chastely on both cheeks, but there is passion in their eyes.

A man of about fifty stands off to one side holding a sign marked ‘Río Salado’. For a second it is like seeing a ghost. He is the image of Simon: short, stocky, pot-bellied and bow-legged, his hair already receding. And his eyes are Simon’s eyes; those eyes that immediately recognise me – how can he spot me in this crowd when we have never met before? The man gives me a little smile, comes over and holds out a chubby hand exactly like his father’s.

‘Michel?’

‘That’s me, Monsieur Jonas. Pleased to meet you. Did you have a good flight?’

‘I slept for a bit.’

‘Have you got any luggage?’

‘Just this bag.’

‘Okay. My car is in the car park.’ He takes the bag and gestures for me to follow him.

Slip roads branch out dizzyingly ahead of us. Michel drives fast, eyes fixed on the road ahead. I don’t dare to turn and look at him; I simply see his face in profile. It is astonishing how much he looks like Simon, my old friend, his father. My chest tightens at the fleeting memory. I take a deep breath to expel the poison suddenly seeping through me. Focus on the road as it whips past, on the shimmering sunlight of the cars as they weave, on the road signs flashing past above our heads: Salon de Provence, straight ahead, Marseille, bear right at next exit; Vitrolles, next exit . . .

‘I expect you’re hungry, Monsieur Jonas. I know a nice little bistro . . .’

‘That’s all right, they served us dinner on the plane.’

‘I’ve booked you into the 4 Dauphins, not far from the Cours Mirabeau. You’re lucky, apparently it’s going to be sunny all week.’

‘I’ll only be staying for a couple of days.’

‘Everybody’s waiting to see you. Two days will never be enough.’

‘I have to get back to Río Salado. My grandson is getting married . . . I wanted to come earlier, to be at the funeral, but getting a visa in Algiers is a devil of a job. I had to get friends in high places to put in a word . . .’

The car hurtles into a tunnel beneath a vast fortress of glass and steel that seems to surge from nowhere.

‘It’s the Aix-en-Provence TGV station,’ Michel explains.

‘But we’re not in the city.’

‘The station is on the outskirts. It’s only been open five or six years. The town is about fifteen minutes away. Have you ever been to Aix, Monsieur Jonas?’

‘No . . . In fact I’ve only ever been to France once. To Marseille in March 1964. I arrived at night and left the following night.’

‘Just a flying visit?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Deported?’

‘Rejected.’

Michel looks at me, puzzled.

‘It’s a long story,’ I say, to change the subject.

We drive through a commercial district full of hypermarkets, shopping centres and underground car parks. Huge neon signs vie with billboards and a sea of people streams around the shops and the markets. There is a traffic jam at the exit and the tailback is half a mile long.

‘The consumer society,’ Michel says. ‘People seem to spend their weekends shopping these days. It’s terrible, isn’t it? My wife and I come every other Saturday. If we miss a Saturday, we find we start arguing over nothing at all.’

‘Every generation has its own drugs.’

‘You’re very right, Monsieur Jonas, every generation has its drugs.’

We are now coming in to Aix-en-Provence, twenty minutes late because of an accident at the Pont de l’Arc. The weather is beautiful and the whole town seems to have shut up shop and headed for the centre. The pavements are teeming with pedestrians and the atmosphere is festive. The stone lions are standing guard around the fountain in the middle of the roundabout on La Rotonde. A Japanese man is taking his girlfriend’s photograph through the whirl of traffic. A small fairground has a flock of children crowding around a handful of attractions; children attached to bungee cords are making death-defying leaps as their terrified parents watch. The sunlit café terraces are full to overflowing, there is not a single free table; the waiters race around, trays balanced precariously. Michel lets a minibus full of tourists pass and drives slowly up the Cours Mirabeau, turning near the top on the Rue du 4 Septembre. My hotel is next to the Fountain of the Four Dolphins. A young blonde girl greets us at the reception desk and has me fill out a form, then directs me to a room on the third floor. A bellhop takes us upstairs, sets my bag down on a table, opens a window, checks that everything is in order and, wishing me a pleasant stay, disappears again.

‘I’ll leave you to take a nap,’ says Michel. ‘I’ll come back and pick you up in a couple of hours.’

‘I’d like to go to the cemetery.’

‘We’re doing that tomorrow. Today, you’re coming over to my house.’

‘I have to go to the cemetery now, while it’s still light. Honestly, I need to.’

‘Okay. I’ll call our friends and ask them to put things back an hour.’

‘Thank you. I don’t need to freshen up and I certainly don’t need a nap. We can go now if that’s all right with you.’

‘I’ve got something I need to do. Can we go in about an hour?’

‘That would be fine, I’ll be waiting downstairs at reception.’

Michel takes out his mobile phone and heads out, closing the door behind him.

He comes back an hour later and picks me up on the steps outside the hotel. I get into the car and he asks if I managed to get any rest; I tell him I lay down for a bit and feel much better now. We head down the Cours Mirabeau, still humming in the shade of the plane trees.

‘What are they celebrating?’ I ask.

‘Life, Monsieur Jonas. Aix celebrates life every day.’

‘It’s always like this here?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘You’re very lucky to live here.’

‘I wouldn’t live anywhere else. My mother used to say that the sun here almost makes up for missing Río Salado.’

Saint-Pierre cemetery, where Paul Cézanne among others is buried, is deserted. At the gates, a stone monument commemorating the French of Algeria and others who were repatriated greets me. The inscription reads: The true resting place of the dead is the hearts of the living. Tarmac pathways lead between grassy areas and ancient chapels. There are photos on some of the tombs as reminders of those who have passed away: a mother, a husband, a brother who died before their time. There are flowers on the graves and the shimmer of marble softens the harsh sunlight and fills the silence with an almost rural tranquillity. Michel leads me through the carefully laid-out paths, shoes crunching on the gravel. Grief is closing in. He stops before a grave with a black granite headstone heaped with mounds of wreaths and dazzling flowers. An inscription reads: Émilie Benyamin, née Cazenave, 1931–2008.

There is nothing more.

‘I expect you’d like to be alone for a minute?’ Michel says.

‘Please.’

‘I’ll take a little walk.’

‘That’s very kind.’

Michel nods his head gently, biting his lower lip. His grief is overwhelming. He walks away, chin pressed against his chest, hands clasped behind his back. When he disappears behind a row of red limestone crypts, I crouch down next to Émilie’s grave, clasp my hands next to my lips and recite a verse from the Qur’an. It is not Sunni tradition, but I do it all the same. In the eyes of popes and imams we are Us and Them, but in the eyes of the Lord we are one. I recite the Sura Al-Fatiha and two passages from the Sura Ya-Seen.

Then, from my pocket, I take out a small cotton purse. I untie the string and open it, slip my shivering fingers inside, take out a pinch of dried petals and scatter them over the grave; this dust is all that remains of a flower picked from a rose bush in a pot almost seventy years ago; the remains of the rose I slipped between the pages of Émilie’s geography book while Germaine was giving her her injection in the pharmacy in Río Salado.

I put the empty purse back in my pocket and get to my feet. My legs are trembling; I have to lean against the headstone. It is my own footsteps I hear on the gravel now. My head is filled with fragments of voices and fleeting images. Émilie sitting in the doorway of our pharmacy, the hood of her coat pulled up, fingers playing with the laces of her boots. I could have mistaken her for an angel come down from heaven. Émilie absently leafing through a large hardback book. What are you reading? A book about Guadeloupe. What’s Guadeloupe? It’s a French island in the Caribbean. Émilie the day before her engagement party Say yes – just say yes and I’ll call it all off. Ahead of me the path is reeling. I feel ill. I try to walk faster but I can’t. Like in a dream, my legs refuse to move; they are rooted to the spot.

There is an old man standing at the gates of the cemetery wearing a uniform decked out with medals from the war. He leans on a walking stick, dark eyes staring out of his crumpled face, and watches me stagger towards him. He does not step aside to let me pass; he waits until I come alongside him and says to me:

‘The French have left. The Jews and the Gypsies have left. There’s just you lot left in Algeria, so why are you still slaughtering one other?’

I don’t know what he is referring to or why he is talking to me like this. I can glean nothing from his face. I have a sudden flash of memory: this is Krimo. Krimo who swore he would kill me back in Río Salado. Just as I remember who he is, a searing pain shoots through my jaw; the same pain I once felt long ago when he hit me with his rifle butt.

‘Remember me now? I can tell from your face that you remember me.’

I gently push him aside and walk on.

‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? What is it with the massacres, the bombings that go on and on? You wanted independence – you’ve got it. You wanted to decide your own fate? Fine! And what have you got? Civil war, terrorists, the Armed Islamic Group. Isn’t that proof enough that all you people are good at is wrecking and killing?’

‘Please, I came to visit a grave, not to dig up the past.’

‘How touching.’

‘What do you want, Krimo?’

‘Me? Nothing . . . Just to get a good look at you. When Michel phoned to tell us the reunion had been pushed back an hour, it was like they’d postponed the Last Judgement.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me, Younes. Have you ever stopped to think what a tragedy your life is?’

‘I don’t want to have to listen to you, Krimo. I didn’t come here to see you.’

‘But I came to see you – came all the way from Alicante to tell you that I haven’t forgotten, and I haven’t forgiven.’

‘That’s why you dragged your old uniform and your medals out of some cardboard box rotting away in your cellar?’

‘Got it in one.’

‘I’m not God, and I’m not the republic. I don’t have the authority to recognise your people or to sympathise with your grief. I’m just a survivor who doesn’t know how he came through without a scratch when he was no better and no worse than those who died . . . If it’s any comfort, we’re all in the same boat. We betrayed our martyrs, you betrayed your ancestors, only to be betrayed in turn.’

‘I never betrayed anyone.’

‘You poor fool. Don’t you realise that one way or another, everyone who survives a war is a traitor?’

Krimo wants to wade in again, his mouth is twisted with rage, but Michel’s sudden reappearance stops him in his tracks. He looks me up and down, then steps aside to let me pass, and I walk down to where the car is parked next to a fairground.

‘Are you coming with us, Krimo?’ Michel asks him, opening the car door.

‘No, I’ll take a taxi.’

Michel does not insist.

‘Sorry about Krimo,’ Michel says as he starts the car.

‘Don’t worry about it. Am I going to get the same kind of welcome wherever we’re going?’

‘We’re going to my house. This might surprise you, but a couple of hours ago Krimo was jumping up and down he was so excited about seeing you again. He didn’t seem angry or upset. He flew in last night from Spain and spent all night laughing and joking about the good old days in Río Salado. I don’t know what got into him.’

‘He’ll get over it, and so will I.’

‘Probably for the best. My mother used to say that sensible people always make up in the end.’

‘Émilie used to say that?’

‘Yeah, why?’

I don’t answer.

‘How many children have you got, Monsieur Jonas?’

‘Two, a boy and a girl.’

‘Grandchildren?’

‘Five . . . the youngest – he’s getting married next week – was the champion diver in Algeria four years running. But my pride and joy is Norah, my granddaughter. She’s twenty-five and she runs one of the most important publishing houses in the country.’

Michel accelerates. We drive along the Route d’Avignon and stop at a red light; a sign points to Chemin Brunet and Michel takes it. The road winds steeply upwards, lined on either side by walls behind which are beautiful villas, glorious houses protected by high gates. The neighbour-hood is tranquil, radiant and burgeoning with flowers. In the street there is not a single child playing, only a handful of old people waiting in the shade of climbing vines for their bus.

The Benyamin house is on the brow of the hill, nestled in a grove of trees. It is a small white villa surrounded by ivy-covered walls. Michel presses a remote control and the gate opens automatically to reveal a large garden and, in the distance, three men sitting at a patio table.

I clamber out. Two of the three old men get up. We stare at each other in silence. I recognise the taller man, one of my neighbours back in Río Salado, a little stooped now and bald, but I cannot remember his name. We were never very close; we’d say hello when we passed each other in the street, then promptly forget about each other. His father was stationmaster at the local train station. Next to him I recognise a man of about seventy – well preserved, with a determined chin and a high forehead – as Bruno, the young policeman who loved to strut about the village square, twirling his whistle around one finger. I am surprised to see him here; I’d heard he’d been killed in an OAS attack in Oran. He comes up to me and holds out his left hand – his right hand is a prosthesis.

‘Jonas . . . it’s a pleasure to see you again.’

‘It’s lovely to see you too, Bruno.’

The tall man also greets me, limply shaking my hand; he clearly feels self-conscious. I suppose we all do. In the car, I had been imagining a joyful reunion, wholehearted embraces, throaty laughs counterpointed by loud claps on the backs. I imagined myself hugging some, holding others at arm’s length so that I could look at them, hearing old nicknames, old jokes; slipping back into childhood as someone told a story, finally exorcising fears that had haunted us for years, keeping only those memories we cherished. But now that we are finally together, all in one place, a strange awkwardness drains all our enthusiasm and we stand, speechless, like children meeting for the first time who do not know how to start the conversation.

‘You don’t remember me, Jonas?’ the tall man asks.

‘Your name is on the tip of my tongue, but I remember you – you lived at number six, behind Madame Lambert. I can still see you climbing over her wall to pilfer from her orchard.’

‘It was hardly an orchard . . . just one big fig tree.’

‘It was an orchard. I live at number thirteen, and I still hear Madame Lambert yelling at kids scrumping fruit from her orchard.’

‘My God . . . all I remember is that big fig tree.’

‘Gustave!’ I shout, clicking my fingers. ‘Now I remember – Gustave Cusset, the class clown. Always showing off.’

Gustave bursts out laughing, pulls me to him and hugs me hard.

‘What about me?’ the third man asks, not getting up from the table. ‘Do you remember me? I never went out scrumping apples, and in class I was as obedient as a puppy.’

He has really aged – André J. Sosa, the braggart, the big shot of Río Salado, who used to fritter money away as fast as his father earned it. He is huge, obese even, his paunch hanging down to his knees; his braces barely hold it up. He’s bald now, his face barely recognisable through the creases and the wrinkles. He smiles, showing a perfect set of false teeth.

‘Dédé!’

‘That’s me,’ he says. ‘An immortal, like they say about those old codgers in the Académie Française.’

He pushes his wheelchair towards me.

‘I can walk,’ he insists. ‘I’m just a little heavy . . .’

We throw our arms around each other and the tears that were misting our eyes begin to trickle down; we do not even try to stop them. We cry, we laugh, we slap each other on the back.

Evening surprises us, still sitting at the table, laughing and hacking hard enough to cough up our lungs. Krimo, who arrived an hour ago, is no longer angry with me. He said all he had to say at the cemetery; he is sitting facing me, feeling guilty about the things we said to each other, but he has the tranquil air of someone who has come to terms with things. It was a long time before he dared to look up at me. That done, he joins in our tales of Río Salado, about the end-of-season balls, the grape harvests, camping out in the moonlight, the drinking sessions and getting our leg over afterwards, about Pépé Rucillio and his secret escapades; not once does he recall anything unpleasant, any painful memory.

Michel’s wife Martine, a strapping woman from Aoulef, half Berber, half Breton, whips up a bouillabaisse of gargantuan proportions. The rouille is delicious and the fish tender.

‘You still don’t drink?’ Dédé asks me.

‘Not a drop.’

‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’

‘If only that was all I was missing.’

He pours himself a glass, looks at it, and knocks it back in one.

‘Is it true there’s no wine-making in Río Salado any more?’

‘It’s true.’

‘Fuck . . . what a waste. I swear there are times when I can still taste that glorious wine we used to make, Alicante d’El Maleh; it made us want to drink and drink until we couldn’t tell a pumpkin from an old woman’s arse.’

‘The agricultural revolution ripped out all the vineyards in the area.’

‘What did they plant instead?’ Gustave asked indignantly. ‘Potatoes?’

André moves the bottle standing on the table between us.

‘What about Jelloul? What’s happened to him? I know he was a captain in the Algerian army and that he was in charge of a military sector in the Sahara, but I haven’t had any news of him for a couple of years now.’

‘By the time he retired in 1990 he was a colonel. He never did live in Río Salado; he bought a little villa in Oran where he planned to live out his days. But then the riots started. A terrorist from the Armed Islamic Group gunned him down outside his own house, shot him with a single bullet while he was sitting daydreaming on his porch.’

André started, suddenly sober.

‘Jelloul is dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Killed by a terrorist?’

‘By an emir in the AIG. And wait till you hear this, Dédé: it was his own nephew.’

‘Jelloul was killed by his own nephew?’

‘You heard what I said.’

‘My God, there’s a terrible irony there.’

Fabrice Scamaroni doesn’t arrive until late in the evening because of the railway strike. The round of hugs and handshakes strikes up again. Fabrice and I have never lost touch. He is an important journalist and a successful writer. I often see him on television. He regularly comes back to Algeria on assignments for his paper and always makes the most of it and comes down to Río Salado. He stays at my house. Every time he visits, rain or snow, he and I get up early in the morning and go to the Christian cemetery to visit his father’s grave. His mother died during the 1970s when a cruise ship sank off the coast of Sardinia.

The table by now is strewn with wine bottles. We have resurrected our dead and drunk to their memory; asked after the living: what became of so-and-so, why did he decide to go and live in Argentina, why did so-and-so move to Morocco? André is drunk as a lord, but he’s holding up well. Bruno and Gustave keep running from the garden to the bathroom. I keep glancing towards the gate.

One person is still missing: Jean-Christophe Lamy.

I know that he’s still alive, that he and Isabelle have been running a thriving business on the Côte d’Azur. Why isn’t he here? Nice is barely a couple of hours by car from Aix. André made it here from Bastia, Bruno from Perpignan, Krimo from Spain, Fabrice from Paris, Gustave from Saôneet-Loire. Is Jean-Christophe still angry with me? What did I do to him? In retrospect, nothing . . . I didn’t do anything. I loved him like a brother, and like a brother I wept for him when he left, trailing the dust of a generation on his heels.

‘Earth to Jonas!’ Bruno shakes my shoulder.

‘What?’

‘What are you dreaming about? I’ve been talking to you for five minutes.’

‘I’m sorry . . . you were saying?’

‘I was talking about the old country. I was saying that we were orphaned by our country.’

‘And I was orphaned by my friends – I don’t know which of us lost more, but it doesn’t matter, it takes the same toll on the heart.’

‘I don’t really think you lost more than we did on the deal, Jonas.’

‘C’est la vie,’ André says philosophically. ‘Life gives with one hand and takes away with the other. But it’s not the same, it’s not the same thing at all . . . losing your friends or losing your country. It eats me up inside just thinking about it. If you want proof, round here we don’t talk about nostalgia, we say nost-algeria.’

He takes a deep breath, his eyes glittering in the lamplight.

‘Algeria still clings to me,’ he confesses. ‘Sometimes it burns like the Tunic of Nessus, sometimes it envelops me like a delicate perfume. I’ve tried to shake it off, but I can’t. How can I forget it? I’ve tried to stop thinking about my youth, to move on, to start with a clean slate. I can’t. I’ve tried to summon all the horrors, to spew them out, to be rid of them once and for all, but it’s no use . . . The memories of the sun, the beaches, the streets, the food we ate, the glorious drunken nights we spent together, the happy times always overshadow the rage, and though I start out snarling I find myself smiling. I’ve never forgotten Río Salado, Jonas. Not for a day, not for a second. I remember every tuft of grass on our hill, every witty remark on the café terraces, and Simon’s jokes and antics even overshadow his death, as though he was determined not to let us associate his tragic death with our dreams of Algeria. I swear, I’ve tried to forget them. More than anything, I have wanted to rip out every memory with a pair of pliers, like pulling out a rotten tooth. I’ve been all over the world, to Latin America, to Asia, to try to get some distance, to reinvent myself somewhere else. I needed to prove to myself that there were other countries, that a homeland can be rebuilt like a new family; but it’s not true. I only have to stop for a second and the bled seeps back into me; I only have to turn around to see it, there where my shadow should be.’

‘If we’d left of our own free will that would be one thing,’ protests Gustave, who is two sips from alcoholic poisoning. ‘But we were forced to leave everything, to run away, our suitcases filled with ghosts and grief. Everything was taken from us, even our souls. We were left with nothing, with less than nothing, not even eyes to weep with. It wasn’t fair, Jonas. Not everyone was a colonist, not everyone went round slapping a riding crop against their aristocratic boots; some of us didn’t have any boots at all. We had our own poor, our own poor neighbourhoods, our own dispossessed, our own good Samaritans, we had small craftsmen who were smaller than yours, and more often than not we prayed the same prayers. Why were we all treated as an indiscriminate mass? Why did we have to be lumped together with a handful of feudal lords? Why were we made to feel like outsiders in a country where our fathers and our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers were born? Why were we made to feel like usurpers in a country we built with our own hands and watered with our sweat, our blood? For as long as we don’t know the answer, the wound will never heal . . .’

The direction the conversation is taking unsettles me. Krimo is already knocking back one glass after another; I’m worried that he will start in on the exchange we had in the graveyard.

‘You know, Jonas . . .’ he says suddenly; it is the first thing he has said to me since our encounter in the graveyard. ‘I really want Algeria to come through this all right.’

‘It’ll come through,’ says Fabrice. ‘Algeria is dormant El Dorado. All it needs is a soul. Right now, it’s searching for that soul in all the wrong places, so it’s hardly surprising that it’s a tragedy. But it’s a young country, it has time to grow.’

Bruno grasps my hand and squeezes it hard.

‘I’d like to go back to Río Salado, even if only for a couple of days.’

‘Who’s stopping you?’ says André. ‘There are flights to Oran and Tlemcen every day. In an hour and a half you can be up to your neck in shit.’

We laugh loud enough to wake the whole neighbourhood.

‘Seriously,’ says Bruno.

‘Seriously what?’ I say. ‘Dédé’s right. You can jump on a plane and in less than two hours you can be home, for a day or for ever. Río Salado hasn’t changed much. Oh, it’s a bit more depressing than it was: the flowers have withered, the wine cellars are gone and the vineyards have all disappeared, but the people there are wonderful and charming. If you come to visit me, you’ll have to visit everyone else, and eternity will not be long enough.’

Michel drives me back to my hotel shortly after midnight and walks me up to my room, where he gives me a small metal case locked with a padlock.

‘A few days before she died, my mother asked me to give this to you personally. If you hadn’t come, I would have had to make a trip to Río Salado.’

I take the case, stare at the flaking design on the lid. It is an antique candy box with engravings of scenes from aristocratic life, noblemen in their gardens, princes flirting with beautiful girls in the shade of a fountain; from the weight, there cannot be much inside it.

‘I’ll come by and pick you up tomorrow at ten a.m. We’ll have lunch at the house of André Sosa’s niece in Manosque.’

‘I’ll see you at ten o’clock. And thank you.’

‘You’re welcome, Monsieur Jonas. Good night.’

He leaves.

I sit on the edge of the bed, holding the box in my hands. What postscript has Émilie left me, what message from beyond the grave? I picture again the Rue des Frères-Julien in Marseille, that day in March 1964; I can see her face, like a mask of bronze, her bloodless lips crushing my last hope of making up for lost time. My hand is trembling; the cold metal chills me to the bone. I have to open it. What difference does it make whether it is a music box or Pandora’s box? At eighty, the future is behind us; all that lies ahead is the past.

I open the tiny padlock, lift the lid: letters . . . There is nothing inside but letters. Dozens of envelopes yellowed by time and blistered by damp; others look as though they have been crumpled up and smoothed again. I recognise my handwriting on the envelopes, stamps from my own country . . . and I realise why Émilie never wrote back to me: she never opened my letters, never opened my cards.

I tip the envelopes on to the bed, check every one of them, hoping to come upon a letter from her. There is one, a recent one, still firm to the touch, with no stamp and no address, only my name written on the front, the envelope sealed with a piece of sellotape.

I cannot bring myself to open it.

Perhaps tomorrow . . .

We have lunch in Manosque, at the house of André’s niece. Here again we trot out old stories, but we are beginning to run out of steam. Another pied-noir comes to see us. When I hear his voice, I think Jean-Christophe Lamy has finally arrived and the thought breathes new life into me, only to fade just as quickly when I realise it isn’t him. The stranger stays for about an hour and then leaves. He listens to our stories but cannot make head or tail of them, and he realises that though he comes from the outskirts of Oran – from Lamorcière, near Tlemcen – he is intruding on a private conversation, disturbing something he does not understand. Bruno and Krimo are the next to go, first to Perpignan, where Krimo will spend the night at his friend’s house before crossing the border into Spain. At about four o’clock, we leave and drop Fabrice at the TGV station outside Aix-en-Provence.

‘Do you really have to go back tomorrow?’ Fabrice asks. ‘Hélène would love to see you. Paris is only three hours by train; you could fly back to Algeria from Orly. I live near the airport.’

‘Some other time, Fabrice. Give Hélène my love. Is she still writing?’

‘She retired a long time ago.’

The train pulls in, a magnificent beast. Fabrice hops up on to the step, hugs me one last time, and goes to find his seat. The train pulls off, moving away slowly. I crane my neck to see Fabrice through the carriage windows, and there he is, standing, one hand raised in a salute. Then the train sweeps him away.

Back in Aix, Gustave offers to take us to Les Deux Garçons. After dinner, we stroll up the Cours Mirabeau. The weather is mild, the café terraces are still full, young people are queuing outside the cinemas. A dishevelled musician is sitting in the middle of the esplanade retuning his violin, his dog curled up next to him.

Outside my hotel, two pedestrians and a driver are yelling at each other. Having run out of arguments, the driver climbs back into his car, slamming the door behind him.

My friends leave me in the capable hands of the receptionist and promise to pick me up at seven a.m. to drop me at the airport.

I take a hot shower and slip into bed.

On the nightstand is Émilie’s box, as immutable as a funerary urn. My hand automatically reaches out and unfastens the padlock, but does not dare lift the lid.

I can’t get to sleep. I try to clear my mind. I hug the pillows, turn on to my left side, on to my back. I feel miserable. Sleep isolates me and I don’t want to be alone in the dark. A private conversation with myself does not appeal. I need to be surrounded by courtiers, to share my frustrations, to designate scapegoats. When you can’t find a remedy for your pain, you look for someone to blame. My pain is nebulous. I feel a sadness, but I can’t put my finger on the cause. Émilie? Jean-Christophe? Old age? The letter waiting for me in the box? Why didn’t Jean-Christophe come? Does he still bear me that ancient grudge?

Through the window, which is open on to the deep blue sky where the moon glitters like a medal, I prepare myself to watch, in slow motion, the parade of my misdeeds, my joys, the familiar faces. I hear them arrive, a thunderous roar like a rockslide. How should I sort them? How should I behave? I am going round in circles on the edge of an abyss, an acrobat on a razor’s edge, a mesmerised volcanologist on the edge of a bubbling crater; I am at the gates of memory, the endless reels of film we all file away, the great dark drawers stocked with the ordinary heroes we once were, the Camusian myths we never could embody, the actors and the roles we played, genius and grotesque, beautiful and monstrous, bowed beneath the weight of our small acts of cowardice, our feats of arms, our lies, our confessions, our oaths and recantations, our gallantry and desertion, our certainties and doubts; in short, our indomitable illusions. What to keep of all these reels of film, what to throw away? If we could take only one memory on our journey, what would we choose? At the expense of what or whom? And most importantly, how to choose among all these shadows, all these spectres, all these titans? Who are we, when all is said and done? Are we the people we once were or the people we wish we had been? Are we the pain we caused others or the pain we suffered at the hands of others? The encounters we missed or those fortuitous meetings that changed the course of our destiny? Our time behind the scenes that saved us from our vanity or the moment in the limelight that warmed us? We are all of these things, we are the whole life that we have lived, its highs and lows, its fortunes and its hardships; we are the sum of the ghosts that haunt us . . . we are a host of characters in one, so convincing in every role we played that it is impossible for us to tell who we really were, who we have become, who we will be.

I listen to the voices of the past; I am no longer alone. Whispers whirl in these splinters of memory like fragments of a vast sound: cryptic phrases, strangled cries, laughter and sobbing impossible to tell apart . . . I can hear Isabelle playing the piano – Chopin – see her slender fingers moving nimbly over the keyboard; I seek out her face, which I imagine tense with blissful concentration; but the image does not change, it remains fixed on the piano keys as the notes explode in a ballet of fireworks . . . My dog appears from behind a hill, eyebrows like circumflexes, a mournful expression. I reach out to stroke him; the gesture is absurd, yet I do it nonetheless. My fingers slip over the bedspread as over fur. I allow these memories to take possession of my breathing, my insomnia, my whole being. I see our shack again, on the side of a dirt track that is fading away . . . I am the child I once was. We do not have a second childhood – we never truly emerge from the first. Am I old? What is an old man but a child who has amassed time and flab? My mother is running down the little hill, her feet raising dust into a thousand constellations. Maman, my darling Maman . . . A mother is not merely a person, nor a unique being, nor even an epoch; a mother is a presence that neither time nor failing of memory can alter. I am the proof; every day God sends, every night when I crawl under the sheets, I know that she is here, that she has been here beside me through the years, the fruitless prayers, the unfulfilled promises, the unbearable absences, all this futility . . . Farther off, crouched by a mound of stones, a straw hat pushed down on his head, my father watches the breeze caress the slender stalks of wheat on the blade . . . then everything spins out of control: the fire raging through our fields, the kaid arriving in his barouche, the cart that brought us to a place where there was no room for my dog . . . Jenane Jato . . . the barber singing, Peg-Leg, El Moro, Ouari and his goldfinches . . . Germaine opening her arms wide as my uncle watched tenderly . . . then Río Salado, always, forever, Río Salado . . .

I close my eyes to put an end to something, to put a stop to this story I have summoned a thousand times, and a thousand times revised. Eyelids are like secret doors; closed they tell us stories, open they look out on to ourselves. We are prisoners of our memories. Our eyes no longer belong to us . . . I look for Émilie in these endless reels of film but cannot find her. It is too late to go back to the cemetery and reclaim the dust of the rose petals; too late to go back to number 143 Rue des Frères-Julien, to become the sensible people who always make up in the end. I struggle through the crowds flooding the port of Oran in the summer of 1962; I see the terrified families on the quays sitting on what little luggage they managed to salvage, the children exhausted, sleeping on the ground, the steamships readying themselves to take the dispossessed into exile. I pan around, now a face, now a cry, an embrace, a fluttering handkerchief. I can see no sign of Émilie . . . And where am I in all this? I am simply a disembodied gaze moving over the crowd, moving between the blankness of absence and the nakedness of silence . . .

What am I to do with the night?

Who can I confide in?

In truth, I do not want to do anything with this night; I do not want to confide in anyone. One truth compensates for every other: all things come to an end, even grief is not eternal.

I take my courage in both hands, open the metal box and then the letter. It is dated one week before Émilie died. I take a deep breath and I read:

Dear Younes,

I waited for you the day after our meeting in Marseille. Waited in the same spot. I waited for you the next day and all the days that followed, but you never came back. Fate – mektoub, as we say in our country. A tiny detail can change everything, for better or for worse. We learn to accept it. In time we become calmer, wiser. I regret all the terrible things I said to you. Perhaps that is why I never dared open your letters. There are silences that should not be broken. Like still waters, they restore our soul.

Forgive me as I have forgiven you.

Here, where I am now, with Simon and all those I loved and lost, I will always think of you.

Émilie.

Suddenly, it is as though all the stars in the heavens meld into a single star, as though the night, the whole of the night, has come into my hotel room to watch over me. Now I know that wherever I go, I will sleep peacefully.

Marignane airport is quiet, there are no crowds, and the queues for check-in gradually peter out. The Air Algérie wing of the terminal is almost deserted. A couple of men with vast suitcases – trabendistes to the initiated, indefatigable traffickers in contraband, the natural result of chronic shortages and survival instinct – use every trick in the book to negotiate their excess baggage, but the person at the check-in desk is unimpressed. Behind them a couple of pensioners with overloaded baggage trolleys patiently wait their turn.

‘Any luggage, sir?’ the girl behind the counter asks me.

‘Just this bag.’

‘You want to take it as cabin baggage?’

‘It would save me having to hang around when I arrive.’

‘That’s very true,’ she says, handing back my passport. ‘This is your boarding pass; boarding is at nine fifteen through gate fourteen.’

My watch reads 8.22 a.m. I ask Gustave and Michel if they would like to join me for a cup of coffee. We find a table. Gustave tries to think of an interesting subject for conversation, without success. We drink our coffee in silence, staring into the middle distance. I think about Jean-Christophe Lamy. Yesterday I was on the point of asking Fabrice why our elder and better had not come, but my tongue shrivelled in my mouth and I said nothing. I found out from André that Jean-Christophe had attended Émilie’s funeral, that Isabelle, who had come with him, was in fine form and that he had told both of them that I was coming to Aix . . . I’m sad about him.

There is a boarding call for flight AH 1069 to Oran, my flight. Gustave gives me a hug. Michel kisses me on both cheeks and says something I do not quite catch. I thank him for his hospitality and then take my leave of them.

I do not go to the boarding gate.

I order another coffee.

I wait.

My intuition tells me something is going to happen, that I have to be patient and stay here in my seat.

Last call for passengers on flight AH 1069 to Oran. A woman’s voice comes over the loudspeakers. Final boarding call for passengers travelling on flight AH 1069.

My coffee cup is empty, my mind is empty. I am floating in empty space. The minutes tramp across my shoulders like elephants. My back hurts, my knees hurt, my stomach hurts. The voice from the loudspeaker is drilling into my brain. Now I am personally being summoned to gate 14. Would Monsieur Mahieddine Younes please come to gate 14, the flight is now closing . . .

My intuition is none too good in its old age, I say to myself. Time to go; there’s no point waiting any longer. Get a move on or you’ll miss your flight, and you’ve got a grandson to marry three days from now . . .

I pick up my bag and head towards the boarding gate. Hardly have I reached it when I hear a voice call me from the depths of I don’t know what:

‘Jonas!’

It’s Jean-Christophe.

There he is, standing behind the yellow line, wrapped up in a thick coat, his hair snow-white, his shoulders bowed, as old as the world.

‘I was starting to give up hope,’ I said, coming back towards him.

‘God knows, I tried to stay away.’

‘It’s good to see you’re still the same stubborn bastard. But don’t you think at our age we’re past all this foolish pride? We’re already living on borrowed time. There aren’t many pleasures left in our twilight years, and there is no greater pleasure than seeing the face of a friend you lost forty-five years ago.’

We throw our arms around each other, drawn by a powerful magnet, like two rivers coursing from opposite extremes bearing all the emotions in the world, which, having rushed past hill and valley, come together suddenly to form a single raging torrent of spume and eddies. I can hear our two old bodies collide, the dry rustle of our suits impossible to distinguish from the dry rustle of our skin. Time marks a pause. There is no one in the world but us. We hug each other hard as once we used to hug our dreams to us, convinced that if we were to relax our grip, even a fraction, they would slip away. We hold each other up with these ancient bodies worn to the marrow in a storm of creaks and groans. We are no more than two frayed nerves, two exposed wires that might short-circuit at any moment, two ancient children sobbing uncontrollably as strangers stand and watch.

Would Monsieur Mahieddine Younes please come immediately to gate 14, your flight is closing . . . The woman’s voice roars over the loudspeakers.

‘Where have you been?’ I ask, holding him at arm’s length so I can look at him.

‘I’m here now, that’s all that matters.’

‘It is.’

We hug each other again.

‘I’m so happy.’

‘So am I, Jonas.’

‘Were you around yesterday and the day before?’

‘No, I was in Nice. Fabrice phoned and called me every name under the sun, then Dédé called. I told them I wasn’t coming. Then, this morning, Isabelle practically kicked me out at five o’clock in the morning. I drove like a maniac. At my age.’

‘How is Isabelle?’

‘Exactly the same as when you knew her. Indestructible and impossible . . . What about you?’

‘I can’t complain.’

‘You look good . . . Have you seen Dédé? You know he’s really ill. He only made the trip for your sake. How was the reunion?’

‘We laughed until we cried, and then we just cried . . .’

‘I can imagine.’

Would Monsieur Mahieddine Younes please come immediately to gate 14, your flight is closing.

‘What about Río Salado, how are things in Río?’

‘Why don’t you come and see for yourself?’

‘Have I been forgiven?’

‘What about you, have you forgiven?’

‘I’m too old, Jonas, I don’t have the energy to bear a grudge any more; just getting annoyed wears me out.’

‘You see? I still live in the same house, right opposite the vineyards. It’s just me, these days; my wife died ten years ago. I have one son who’s married and living in Tamarasset and a daughter who’s a professor at Concordia University in Montreal. It’s not like I don’t have the space. You can have your pick of bedrooms, they’re all empty. The wooden horse you gave me to apologise for beating me up over Isabelle is right where you last saw it, on the mantelpiece.’

An Air Algérie employee comes up to me.

‘Are you flying to Oran?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mahieddine Younes?’

‘That’s me.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind, the plane is waiting to leave. You need to board now.’

Jean-Christophe gives me a wink.

‘Tabqa ‘ala kher, Jonas. Go in peace.’

He hugs me again, and I can feel his body trembling in my arms. Our embrace lasts for an eternity – to the irritation of the Air Algérie attendant. Jean-Christophe is the first to break away. His voice choked, his eyes red, he says in a small voice:

‘Go on, get going . . .’

‘I’ll be waiting for you,’ I say.

‘I’ll come, I promise.’

He smiles.

I hurry to make my flight, the Air Algérie attendant in front, clearing a path through the queues, through the baggage scanner, through immigration. As I arrive airside, I turn around one last time to see what I am leaving behind, and I see them all, the living and the dead, standing at the window waving me goodbye.