Then, still running, through the heat and the dust that covered their feet and their sandals with a single gray layer, they dashed on to the green field. It was a vacant lot behind a cooperage, where among rusted hoops and old rotting barrel bottoms bunches of anemic grass sprouted between patches of chalky tuff. There amidst loud cries they would draw a circle in the tuff. One of them would take up a position in the circle, racquet in hand, and the others would take turns hurling the wooden cigar into the circle. If the cigar landed in the circle, the thrower took the racquet, and then he defended the circle. The more skillful among theme would hit the cigar on the fly and drive it far away. In that case they had the right to go where it had landed, make the cigar jump in the air by hitting its end with the edge of the racquet, then drive it still farther, and so on until either they missed their swing or the others caught it on the fly, and they hurried back again to defend the circle from the cigar hurled quickly and expertly by the opponent.
This poor man’s tennis, which had a few more complex rules, would take up the whole afternoon. Pierre was the best player. He was thinner than Jacques, and smaller, almost frail; his hair was as much blond as brown hanging down to his eyebrows beneath which his blue eyes were direct and vulnerable, a bit hurt, astonished; though clumsy in his manner, in action he was sure and accurate. As for Jacques, he would make impossible parries and miss routine backhands. Because of the former, and the successes that caused his comrades to admire him, he thought he was the best player and often bragged about it. In fact, Pierre beat him all the time and never said a word. But after the game he would straighten up to his full height and smile to himself while he listened to the others.f
When either the weather or their mood did not lend itself to running around the streets and vacant lots, they would first gather in the hall of Jacques’s house. From there they went out the back door and down into a small yard enclosed on three sides by the walls of houses. On the fourth side a big orange tree stretched its branches over a garden wall; when it was in flower, its scent rose alongside the wretched houses, drifting through the hall or down a small stone stairs to the yard. Along one side and half of another a small L-shaped building housed the Spanish barber whose shop was on the street, and an Arab householdg where on some evenings the wife would be roasting coffee in the yard. On the third side, the tenants kept hens up in high dilapidated coops made of wood and wire screening. Finally, on the fourth side, the black maws of the building’s cellars gaped on either side of the stairs: caverns without exit or lighting, cut into the earth itself, without any partitions, sweating with humidity, reached by four steps covered with green mold, where the tenants piled at random their surplus possessions, that is, almost nothing: old sacks were rotting there, scraps of chests, rusty old washbasins with holes in them, things you find lying around vacant lots that even the poorest have no use for. It was there, in one of those cellars, that the children would gather.
Jean and Joseph, the two sons of the Spanish barber, were in the habit of playing there. Since it was at the door to their hovel, the cellar was their own territory. Joseph, plump and mischievous, was always laughing and would give away everything he had. The short and thin Jean was forever picking up even the smallest nail or screw that he found, and he was particularly stingy with his marbles and with the apricot pits that were necessary for one of their favorite games.h You could not imagine more opposite types than these inseparable brothers. With Pierre, Jacques, and Max, the last of the accomplices, they would plunge into the humid stinking cellar.
They would take torn sacks that were rotting on the ground and, after ridding them of the gray cockroaches with jointed shells that they called guinea pigs, they would stretch them over rusty iron uprights. And under this vile tent, in their own place at last (when none of them had ever had a room or even a bed he could call his own), they would light a little fire that, confined in that damp air, would die out in smoke and drive them out of their den until they covered it over with some damp earth they had scraped up from the yard itself.
Then they would share, not without an argument from little Jean, the big mint-flavored caramels, the dried and salted peanuts and chick-peas, the salted lupine seeds called “tramousses,” and the barley sugar that came in loud colors, sold by the Arabs who displayed their wares in front of the nearby movie theatre on a fly-besieged stand made by mounting a plain wooden box on rollers. On days when it rained heavily, the excess water would run off the saturated yard and flood the cellars, and the children, standing on old boxes, would play Robinson Crusoe far from the open sky and the sea breezes, triumphant in their kingdom of poverty.i
But the best* days were those in summer when, under one pretext or another, the boys managed by a clever lie to escape the siesta. Then, since they never had money for the trolley, they would walk the long way to the experimental garden, through a succession of the neighborhood’s yellow-and-gray streets, crossing the district of the stables, the big coachhouses belonging to businesses or individuals who supplied the regions of the interior with their horse-drawn trucks, then passing alongside big sliding doors behind which they heard the horses stamping, the sudden snorts that would make the animals’ lips smack, the sound of the metal chains used as halters hitting against the wood of the manger, while the boys breathed with delight the odors of manure, of straw, and of sweat that came from these forbidden places that Jacques would still be dreaming about while he went to sleep. They, lingered in front of an open stable where the horses were being groomed, heavyset big-hoofed animals that came from France; they were beaten down by the heat and the flies, and their eyes were those of exiles.
Then, chased away by the teamsters, the children ran on to the huge garden where the rarest of species were raised. There, on the broad walk that led past a great vista of pools and flowers to the sea, they were under the suspicious eyes of the guards, and they affected the manner of casual, worldly strollers. But at the first transverse path, they would head toward the eastern part of the garden, through rows of enormous mangroves so dense that in their shade it seemed almost night, then past the big rubber treesj where you could not tell the drooping branches from their multiple roots, which grew from the first branches to reach the ground; and still farther, to the real objective of their expedition, the big palms that bore at their tops tightly packed bunches of round orange fruits that they called “cocoses.” Once there, they first had to reconnoiter in all directions to make sure no guards were nearby. Then began the search for ammunition—that is, stones.
When they had all returned with their pockets full, they took turns firing stones at the bunches of fruit swaying gently in the sky above all the other trees. Each stone that struck home knocked down a few fruits, which belonged to the winning marksman. The others had to wait till he had picked up his loot before they fired in their turn. Jacques, who had a good arm, equaled Pierre at this game. But they both shared their booty with those who were less successful. The worst among them at this game was Max, who wore glasses and had poor eyesight.
He was squat and solidly built, and the boys had respected him ever since the day they saw him fight. The others, and especially Jacques, who could not control his violent temper, were in the habit during their frequent street fights of hurling themselves at the adversary in an attempt to inflict as much pain as quickly as possible, even at the risk of being hit hard in return. But when Max, whose name sounded German, was called a dirty Hun by the butcher’s fat son, nicknamed “Gigot,” he calmly removed his glasses, which he entrusted to Joseph, took up the boxer’s stance they had seen pictured in the newspapers, and invited the other boy to repeat his insult.
Then, not seeming to raise a sweat, he dodged each attack by Gigot, hit him several times without being even touched in return, and finally, the supreme glory, he gave Gigot a black eye. Since that day, Max’s popularity in the little group had been assured. Now, with their hands and pockets sticky with fruit, they hurried out of the garden toward the sea, and once they were outside the boundary, they ate the cocoses stacked on their dirty handkerchiefs, chewing delightedly on fibrous berries that were nauseatingly sweet and rich, yet as light and savory as victory. Then they
