Chapter 9

But my most treasured memories concerning oranges come from Barbicaglia, a large garden close to Ajaccio, where I was about to have a siesta in the hottest time of the day. The orange trees were taller and further apart than in Blidah and reached down to the road, behind a ditched hedge. Immediately beyond the road, there was the deep blue sea.... I have had such happy times in that orchard. The orange trees in flower and in fruit, spread their delightful perfume around. Occasionally, a ripe orange, would fall and drop to the ground near me with a dull thud, and I just had to stretch out my hand. They were superb fruit, with their purple, blood-colour flesh inside, and looked exquisite, toning in with the surrounding stunning scenery. Between the leaves, the sea was seen in dazzling blue patches, like shattered glass sparkling in the sea mist. The ever-moving sea disturbed the atmosphere far away and caused a rhythmic murmur that soothed, like being on a boat. Oh, the heat, and the smell of oranges.... It was just so very refreshing to sleep in that orchard at Barbicaglia!

Sometimes, however, at the height of the siesta, a drum-roll would wake me up with a start. The boys of the military band came over there to practice on the road. Through the gaps in the hedge, I could see the brass decoration on the drums and the white aprons on their red trousers. The poor devils came into what little shade was offered by the hedge to hide for a while from the blinding light, pitilessly reflected from the dust on the road. And they played on until they became very, very hot! I forced myself from my dream-like state, and amused myself by throwing them some of the golden, red fruit that I could easily reach. My target drummer stopped. There was a short pause, as he looked around for the source of this superb orange rolling into the ditch beside him, before snatching it up and taking a grateful mouthful without even bothering to peel it.

Right next to Barbicaglia, over a low wall, I overlooked a small, strange garden of an Italianate design in a small plot of land. Its sand-covered paths bordered by bright green box trees and two cypress trees guarding the entrance gave it the look of a Marseille country seat. There was no shade whatsoever. At the far end, there was a white stone building with skylight windows on the ground floor. At first I thought it was a country house, but on closer inspection, I noticed a cross on the roof, and a carved inscription in the stone which I couldn't make out from here. I knew then that it was a Corsican family tomb. These little mausoleums can be seen all around Ajaccio, well-spaced, and surrounded by a garden. The families go there on Sundays, to visit their dead. A setting like that, gives death a less gloomy air than the confusion of cemeteries; and there is only the footsteps of friends to disturb the silence.

From where I was, I could see an old chap shuffling calmly around the paths. All day long, he trimmed the trees, dug the ground over, and watered and dead-headed the flowers with great care. At sunset, he went into the small chapel, where the family dead lay, to put away the spade, the rakes, and the large watering cans, while displaying all the respectful tranquillity and serenity of a cemetery gardener. The man worked with a certain subliminal reverence, and always locked the vault door quietly, as if wary of waking somebody. Within its great and glorious silence, the upkeep of this little garden troubled no one and didn't by any means depress the neighbourhood; in fact, only the immense sea and the infinite sky had more grandeur. This everlasting siesta--surrounded as it was by the overwhelming sights and forces of nature--brought a sense of eternal repose to everything in sight....

THE TWO INNS

I was on my way back from Nîmes, one crushingly hot afternoon in July. As far as the eye could see, the white, blistering road, was turning to clouds of dust between olive groves and small oaks, under a great, silver, hazy sun which filled the whole sky. Not a trace of shade, not a whisper of wind. Nothing except the shimmering of the hot air and the strident cry of the cicadas' incessant din, deafening, hurried, and seeming to harmonise with the immense luminous shimmering.... I had walked for two hours in this desert in the middle of nowhere, when suddenly a group of white houses emerged from the dust cloud in the road in front of me. They were known as the Saint-Vincent coaching inns: five or six farms with long red roofed barns; and a dried up watering hole in a would-be oasis of spindly fig trees. At the end of the village, two large inns faced each other across the road.

There was something striking about these inns and their strange setting. On one side, there was a large, new building, full of life and buzzing with activity. All the doors were ajar; a coach was in front, from which the steaming horses were being unhitched. The disembarked passengers were hurriedly drinking in the partial shade by the walls. There was a courtyard strewn with mules and wagons, and the wagoners were lying down under the outhouses waiting to feel cool. Inside there was the jumbled sound of shouting, swearing, fists banging on the tables, glasses clinking, billiard balls rattling, lemonade corks popping, and above all that racket, a joyful voice, bursting with song loud enough to shake the windows:

The lovely Margoton, Just as soon as night was day, Took her little silver can, To the river made her away....

... The inn on the other side was silent and looked completely abandoned. There was grass under the gate, broken blinds, and a branch of dead holly on the door; all that was left of an old decoration. The entrance steps were supported by stones from the road.... It was so poor and pitiful, that it was a real act of charity to stop there at all, even for a drink.

* * * * *

As I went in, I saw a long gloomy, deserted room, with daylight, bursting in through three large, curtainless, windows, which just made it look even more deserted and gloomy. There were some unsteady tables, with dust-covered glasses long abandoned on them. There was also a broken billiard table which held out its six pockets like begging bowls, a yellow couch, and an old bar, all slumbering on in the heavy, unhealthy heat.

And the flies! Oh, God, the flies! I have never seen so many. They were on the ceiling, stuck to the windows, in the glasses, in clusters everywhere.... When I opened the door, there was a buzzing as if I had just entered a bee hive. At the back of the room, in a window, there was a woman standing, her face pressed against the glass and totally absorbed in looking through it. I called to her twice:

--Hello, landlady!

She turned round slowly and revealed a pitiful peasant's face, wrinkled, cracked, earth coloured, and framed in long strands of brownish lace, like old women wear hereabouts. And yet, she wasn't an old woman, perhaps the tears had wilted her.

--What can I do for you? She asked me, drying her eyes.

--Just a sit down and a drink....

She looked at me, utterly astonished, and didn't move as if she hadn't understood.

--This is an inn, isn't it?

The woman sighed:

--Yes ... it's an inn, in a manner of speaking.... But why aren't you over the road like everybody else? It's a much livelier place....

--It's a bit too lively for my liking.... I'd rather stay here.

And without waiting for her reply, I sat down at a table. Once she had satisfied herself that I was genuine, she began to flit to and fro busily, opening drawers, moving bottles, wiping glasses, and flicking the flies away.... You could see that a customer was quite an event for her. Now and then the unfortunate woman would hold her head as if she was despairing of getting to the end of it.

Then she disappeared into a back room; I heard her take up some keys, fiddle with the locks, rummage in the bread bin, huff and puff, do some dusting, wash some plates. And from time to time ... a muffled sob.... After a quarter of an hour of this performance, a plate of dried raisins, an old Beaucaire loaf as hard as the dish it came on, and a bottle of cheap wine, were placed before me.

--There you are, said the strange creature, and rushed back to her place at the window.

* * * * *

I tried to engage her in conversation as I was drinking up.

--You don't often get people here do you, madam?

-- Oh, no, monsieur, never, no one.... It was very different at the time when we were the only the coaching inn around here. We did the lunches for the hunt during the soter bird season, as well as coaches all the year round.... But since the other place has opened up, we've lost everything.... The world and his wife prefer to go across the way. They find it just too miserable here.... The simple fact is that this place doesn't interest them. I'm not beautiful, I have prickly heat, and my two little girls are dead.... Over there it's very different, there is laughter all the time. A woman from Arles, a beautiful woman with lots of lace and three gold chains round her neck, keeps the place. The driver, her lover, brings in customers for her in the coach. She also has a number of attractive girls for chamber maids.... This also brings lots of business in! She gets all the young people from Bezouces, from Redessan and from Jonquières. The coachmen go out of their way to call in at her place.... As for me, I'm stuck in here all day, all alone, eating my heart out.

She said all that with a distracted, vacant way, forehead still pressed against the window pane. Obviously, there was something in the inn opposite that really interested her.... Suddenly, over the road, a lot started to happen. The coach edged forward in the dust. The sounds of cracking whips and a horn was heard. The young girls squeezed together in the doorway and shouted:

--Goodbye!... Goodbye!... And above all that, the wonderful voice, singing, as before, most beautifully,

Took her little silver can, To the river made her way, She didn't notice by the water, Three young cavaliers, quite near.

The woman's whole body shook on hearing that voice; and she turned towards me and whispered:

--Do you hear that? That's my husband.... Don't you think he has a beautiful voice?

I looked at her, stupefied.

--What? Your husband?... So even he goes over there?

Then, with an apologetic air, but movingly, she said:

--What can you do, monsieur? Men are like that, they don't like tears, and I'm always breaking down, since our little girls died.... Then, this dump of a place, where nobody comes, is so miserable.... Well then, when he gets really fed up, my poor dear José goes over the road for a drink, and, the woman from Arles gets him to sing with that gorgeous voice of his. Hush!... There he goes again. And, trembling, and with huge tears that made her look even more ugly, she stood there in front of the window, hands held out in ecstasy, listening to her José singing to the woman from Arles:

The first was bold and whispered to her, You're so beautiful my dear!

AT MILIANAH

_Notes from the Voyage._

This time, I am going to take you away to spend a day a very long way from the windmill in a pretty little Algerian town.... It will be a nice change from the tambourines and cicadas....

... There's rain in the air; the sky is grey; the crests of Mount Zaccar are enveloped in fog; it's a miserable Sunday.... I'm in my small hotel room, lighting one cigarette after another, just trying to take my mind off things.... The hotel library has been put at my disposal. I find an odd volume of Montaigne between a detailed history of hotel registrations and a few Paul de Kock novels. Opening it at random, I re-read the admirable essay on the death of La Boétie.... So, now I'm more dreamy and gloomy than ever.... A few drops of rain are starting to fall, each one leaving a large star in the dust accumulated on the windowsill since last year's rain.... The book slips out of my hands, as I stare hypnotically at the melancholy star for some time....

The town clock strikes two on an old _marabout_ whose slender, high, white walls I can see from here.... Poor old marabout. Thirty years ago, who would have thought that one day it would have a big municipal dial stuck in its solar plexus, and on Sundays, on the stroke of two, it would give a lead to the churches of Milianah, to sound their bells for Vespers?... There they go now, ringing away.... And not for a brief spell, either...

Without doubt this room is a miserable place. The huge, dawn spinners, known as philosopher's thought spiders, have spun their webs everywhere.... I'm going out.

* * * * *

I'm on the main square, now. Just the place for the military band of the Third Division, not put off by a bit of rain, which has just arranged itself around the conductor. The Brigade General appears at one of the Division windows, surrounded by his fancy women. The sub-prefect is on the square and walks to and fro on the arm of the Justice of the Peace. Half a dozen young Arabs, stripped to the waist, are playing marbles in a corner to the sound of their own ferocious shouting. Elsewhere, an old Jew in rags comes to look for a ray of sunshine he left here yesterday and looks astonished not to find it.... "One, two, three...!" the band launched into an old Talexian mazurka, which Barbary organs used to play, irritatingly, under my window last year. But it moved me to tears today.

Oh, how happy are these musicians of the third! Their eyes fixed on the dotted crochets, drunk on rhythm and noise, only conscious of counting beats. Their whole being was in that hand-sized bit of paper vibrating in brass prongs at the end of their instruments. "One, two, three...!" They have everything they need these fine men, except they never play the national anthem; it makes them home sick.... Alas, I haven't much of a musical ear and this piece irritates me, so I'm off....

* * * * *

Now, where on earth would I be able to have a nice time, on a grey Sunday like this? I know! Sid'Omar's shop is open. I'm going there.

He may have a shop, Sid'Omar, but he is no shopkeeper. He is a prince of the blood line, the son of a former Dey of Algeria, who was strangled to death by Turkish soldiers.... When his father was killed, he sought refuge in Milianah with his adored mother. He lived there for several years like a fine gentleman philosopher with his greyhounds, falcons, horses, and wives in this attractive and refreshing palace, amongst the orange trees and fountains. Then the French came; we came. Sid'Omar was our enemy at first and allied himself with Abd-el-Kader, but then he fell out with the Emir and surrendered to us. While Sid'Omar was away from Milianah, the Emir took revenge by pillaging his palace. He flattened his orange trees, made off with his horses and wives; and killed his mother, cruelly crushing her throat under the lid of a large chest.... Sid'Omar's anger knew no bounds: within the hour he had enrolled himself in the French army, and we had no better, fiercer soldier, for as long as our war with the Emir lasted. Sid'Omar returned to Milianah; but even today at the merest mention of Abd-el-Kader, he grows pale and his eyes light up.

Sid'Omar is sixty now, and despite his age and the smallpox, his face has stayed rather handsome. He has long eyelashes, with an appealing look and a charming smile; very prince-like. The war ruined him, and all he has left of his former opulence is a farm in the plain of Chélif and a house in Milianah, where he lives a bourgeois life with his three sons, who are being brought up under his aegis. The local bigwigs hold him in some veneration. If a dispute breaks out they are only too happy to let him arbitrate; and his judgement usually carries the weight of law. He seldom goes out; you can usually find him every afternoon next door in a shop which opens onto the road. It is not opulently furnished; the walls are whitewashed, and there are a circular wooden bench, cushions, long pipes, and two braziers.... This is where Sid'Omar gives his audiences and dispenses justice. Hey! Solomon in a shop.

* * * * *

Today is Sunday and there is a good turn out. A dozen leaders, each in their burnous, are squatting all around the room, a large pipe and small fine filigreed eggcup full of coffee to hand. I go in; nobody moves.... From where he is, Sid'Omar gives me his most charming smile by way of a greeting and beckons me to sit next to him on a large yellow silk cushion. He puts a finger to his mouth to indicate that I should listen.

The case is between the leader of the Beni-Zougzougs and a Jew from Milianah, who are having a dispute about a plot of land. The two parties had agreed to put their differences to Sid'Omar and to abide by his judgement. The meeting is set for this very day, and the witnesses are assembled. Surprisingly, it is my Jew, and he is having second thoughts and has come alone, without witnesses, declaring that he would prefer to rely on the judgement of a French Justice of the Peace than on Sid'Omar's.... That was where things stood when I arrived.

The Jew--old, greying beard, brown jacket, blue stockings, and velvet cap--raises his eyes to the sky and rolls them, kisses Sid'Omar's silk slippers, bows his head, kneels down, and clasps his hands together, pleadingly.... I have no Arabic, but from the Jew's miming and from the words _Joustees of the peace, Joustees of the peace_, which he keeps repeating, I get the gist of what he is saying.

--I have no doubts about Sid'Omar, Sid'Omar is wise, Sid'Omar is just.... But, the Joustees of the Peace would be more suitable for our business.

The audience is indignant, and yet remains impassive as Arabs do.... Stretched out on his cushion, his eyes blurred, the amber book to his lips, Sid'Omar--that master of irony--smiles as he listens. Suddenly, at the height of his pleas, the Jew is interrupted by an energetic _caramba!_ which stops him. Dead. The voice belongs to a Spanish colonial, who has come as a witness for the leader, and who then leaves his place and approaches the Judas Jew, and pours a bucketful of imprecations in all tongues and shades of blue over his head--mixed with other French expressions too gross to repeat.... Sid'Omar's son, who understands French, reddened on hearing such words in front of his father and leaves--keeping up an Arabic tradition. The audience is still impassive, Sid'Omar still smiling on. The Jew stands up and backs towards the door, trembling and scared, and babbles on about his everlasting, _Joustees of the Peas, Joustees of the Peas_.... He leaves. The Spaniard, furious, is at his heels and meets up with him in the road before hitting him; twice; full in the face.... the Jew falls to his knees, with his arms covering his face. The Spaniard, a little ashamed of himself, comes back into the shop.... As soon as he is safely inside, the Jew gets up with a shifty look at the motley crowd surrounding him. There were people of many races and colours there--Maltese, Minorcans, Negroes, and Arabs, all united--for once--in hating the Jew and loving to see him so maltreated.... The Jew hesitates a while, then grabs an Arab by his burnous:

--You saw him ... Achmed, you saw him ... you were there!... The Christian hit me ... you shall be a witness ... yes ... yes ... you shall be a witness.

The Arab frees his burnous and pushes the Jew away.... He knows nothing; he's seen nothing; he was looking the other way....

--How about you, Kaddour, you saw him.... You saw the Christian strike me ... shouts my unfortunate Jew to a big Negro who is impassively peeling a Barbary fig....

The Negro spits his contempt and moves away, he hasn't seen a thing. Neither has the little Maltese, whose coal-black eyes glisten viciously under his biretta; nor the rust-coloured girl from Mahon who, placing a basket of pomegranates on her head, laughs it all, and him, off....

No matter how much the Jew shouts, pleads, demeans himself ... no witnesses! Nobody saw anything.... By chance, just then a couple of fellow Zionists pass by. They are humiliated, and cower by a wall. The Jew spots them:

--Quick, quick, brothers. Quick, to the consultant! Quick to the _Joustees of the Peas_!... The rest of you, you saw him.... you saw him beat the old man up!

As if they'd seen him!... I don't think so.

... Things are getting lively in old Sid'Omar's shop.... The proprietor refills their cups, and relights their pipes. They chat on, and they laugh fit to burst. It's such a pleasure to see a Jew beaten up!... In the middle of the hubbub and smoke, I slip out quietly; I want to wander in the Jewish quarter, to see how my Jew's coreligionists, are taking their brother's outrage....

--Come to dinner tonight, m'sier, the good old Sid'Omar shouted....

I agree and thank him. I go outside. In the Jewish quarter, there is turmoil. The matter has already attracted a lot of attention. Nobody is minding the store. Embroiderers, tailors, and saddlers--all Israel is out on the street.... The men in their velvet caps, and blue woollen stockings fidgeting noisily in groups.... The women, pale, bloated, and unattractive in their thin dresses and gold fronts, have their faces wrapped in black bandages, and are going from group to group, caterwauling.... As I arrive, something starts to move in the crowd. There's an urgency and a crush.... Relying on their witness, my Jew--hero of the hour--passes between two rows of caps, under a hail of exhortations:

--Revenge yourself, brother, revenge us, revenge the Jewish people. Fear nothing; you have the law on your side.

A hideous dwarf, smelling of pitch and old leather, comes to me pitifully, sighing deeply:

--You see! he said to me. We're hard done by, we Jews. How they treat us! He's an old man. Look! They've practically killed him.

It's true, my poor Jew looks more dead than alive. He goes past me--his eyes lifeless, his face haggard--not so much walking as dragging himself along.... Only a huge compensation looks likely to make him feel any better; after all, he is going to the consultant, not to the doctor.

* * * * *

There are almost as many consultants in Algeria as there are grasshoppers. It's a good living, I'd say. In any case, it has the great advantage that you can just walk into it, without passing examinations, or leaving a bond, or being trained. In Paris you become a lawyer; in Algeria a consultant. It's enough to have a bit of French, Spanish, and Arabian, and to have a code of conduct in your saddle bag; but above all else, you need the right temperament for the job.

The agent's functions are very varied: he can be in turn a barrister, solicitor, broker, expert, interpreter, money dealer, commissioner, and public scribe; he is the Jack of all trades of the colony. Only Harpagon has a single Jack of all trades; the rest of the colony has a surfeit, and nowhere more than Milianah, where they can be counted in dozens. Usually, to avoid office expenses, these gentlemen meet their clients in the café in the main square and give their consultations--did I say give?--between the appetiser and the after dinner wine.

The dignified Jew is making his way towards the café in the main square, with the two witnesses at his side. I will leave them to it.

* * * * *

As I leave the Jewish quarter, I go past the Arab Bureau. From outside, with its slate grey roof and French flag flying above, it could be taken for the village town hall. I know the interpreter, so I go in and have a cigarette with him. In between fags, this sunless Sunday has turned out quite well.