To get there they had to cross what was called the sheep’s trail, because in fact flocks of sheep often traveled it to or from the Maison-Carrée market, east of Algiers. Actually it was a lateral road that divided the sea from the city spread out on its hills like the arc of an amphitheatre. Between the road and the sea lay factories, brickyards, and a gasworks separated by stretches of sand covered with patches of clay or lime dust where scraps of iron and wood were turning white.
You crossed this barren land to reach the Sablettes beach. Its sand was somewhat dirty, and the water in the first waves was not always clear. To the right, the public baths offered cabins, and its hall, a big wooden box on pilings, was available for dancing on holidays. Every day, during the season, a french-fries peddler would start up his stove.
Seldom did the little group have even the price of a single paper cornet of fried potatoes. If by chance one of them had the required coin,k he would buy his twist, march solemnly to the beach, followed respectfully by the retinue of his comrades, and, in the shade of an old derelict barge by the sea, he would set his feet in the sand and drop to a sitting position while holding his twist vertical in one hand and covered with the other, to make sure he did not lose a single one of the crusty fries.
The custom was that he would then give his comrades one fry apiece, and they would reverently savor the single tidbit, hot and smelling of strong oil, that he permitted them. They would watch while the favored boy gravely relished the remaining fries one by one. There were always crumbs left at the bottom of the paper twist, which they would implore the glutted owner to share. Most of the time, unless it was Jean, he would unfold the oily paper, spread out the potato crumbs, and authorize them to take a single crumb each.
All it took then was an eenie, meenie, minie, moe to decide who would go first and thus get the biggest crumb. When their feast was over, both pleasure and frustration immediately forgotten, they would race under the harsh sun toward the western end of the beach, until they came to a half-destroyed masonry structure that must have been the foundation for a now vanished bungalow, behind which they could undress.
In a few seconds they were naked, a moment later in the water, swimming with clumsy vigor, shouting,l drooling and spitting, daring each other to dive or vying as to who could stay underwater the longest. The sea was gentle and warm, the sun fell lightly on their soaked heads, and the glory of the light filled their young bodies with a joy that made them cry out incessantly. They reigned over life and over the sea, and, like nobles certain that their riches were limitless, they heedlessly consumed the most gorgeous of this world’s offerings.
They forgot the time as they ran back and forth between beach and sea, drying the salt water that made them sticky while they were on the sand, then in the water washing off the sand that clothed them in gray. They ran on and on, and the swifts with their quick cries were beginning to fly lower over the factories and the beach. The sky, emptied of the hot haze of the day, became clearer, then turned greenish, the light slackened, and on the other side of the bay, till now enveloped in a sort of fog, the sweep of houses and the city became more distinct.
It was still day, but already lamps were being lit in preparation for Africa’s brief twilight. Pierre was usually the first to sound the alarm: “It’s late,” and right away came the stampede, the quick farewell. Jacques with Joseph and Jean ran toward their homes without worrying about the others. They galloped till they were out of breath: Joseph’s mother was quick with her hand. And as for Jacques’s grandmother … They ran on through the rapidly falling night, panicked when the first gaslamp went on, the trolleys with their lights on receding before them; they ran faster, dismayed to see that night had already fallen, and parted on the doorstep without even a goodbye.
On such evenings Jacques would stop on the dark stinking stairs, lean against the wall, and wait for his throbbing heart to quiet down. But he could not wait, and the knowledge made him gasp still more. In three strides he was on the landing; he passed by the door to the toilet for the floor, and he opened his door. There was a light in the dining room at the end of the hall, and, chilled, he heard the rattle of spoons against dishes. He entered. At the table his half-mute unclea went on noisily sucking up his soup; his mother, still young, her brown hair abundant, gazed at him with her lovely gentle look. “You know perfectly well—” she began.
But his grandmother, of whom he only saw the back, interrupted her daughter; she was erect in her black dress, her mouth firmly set, her eyes direct and stern. “Where were you?” she asked.
“Pierre was showing me the arithmetic homework.”
The grandmother stood and came over to him. She sniffed his hair, then ran her hands over his ankles still covered with sand. “You were at the beach.”
“Then you’re liar,” the uncle managed to articulate.
The grandmother passed behind him to get the crude whip, known as a bull’s pizzle, that was hanging behind the door, and she gave him three or four lashes on his legs and buttocks that burned till he howled. A little while later, sitting with tears filling his mouth and throat before the plate of soup that the uncle, moved to pity, had served him, he strained every nerve to keep those tears from overflowing. And his mother, after a glance at the grandmother, would turn to him that face he so loved: “Eat your soup,” she would say. “It’s all over. It’s all over.” That was when he let go and wept.
Jacques Cormery awakened. The sun was no longer reflected in the copper of the porthole, but had dropped to the horizon and was lighting up the wainscoting across the cabin. He dressed and went out on the deck. He would find Algiers at the end of the night.
a. Around his tenth year.
b. Those big books printed on newsprint, with crudely colored covers on which the price was printed in bigger type than the title or the name of the author.
c. extreme cleanliness.
A wardrobe, a wooden dressing table with a marble top. A bedside rug with knotted stitches, worn and dirty, frayed at the edges. And in a corner, a big trunk covered with an old tasseled Arab rug.
d. His friend Pierre was also the son of a war widow, who worked in the post office.
- See the author’s explanation below.
e. put the skillful defender in the singular.
f. The green field was where the donnades took place. [Fights between boys that followed a strict ritual. See pp. 153–54—Trans.]
g. Omar is the son of this couple—the father is a city street sweeper.
h. You put one pit on top of a tripod of three other pits. Someone tries to knock this structure down by throwing another pit at it from a given distance. If he succeeds, he picks up the four pits. If he misses, his pit belongs to the owner of the pile.
i. Galoufa.
- biggest.
j. give the name of the trees.
k. 2 sous
l. If you drown, your mother’ll kill you. Aren’t you ashamed to let everything hang out like that. Where’s your mother.
m. the brother.
5 : The Father. His Death
The War. The Bombing
He held her in his arms, right at the door, still out of breath from racing up the stairs four at a time, in a single surefooted dash not missing a step, as if his body still remembered the exact height of each stair. When he had gotten out of the taxi, the street was already lively and still sparkling in spots from the morning’sa sprinkling, which the burgeoning heat was beginning to disperse in mist; he saw her there where she had been long ago, on the apartment’s single narrow balcony between the two rooms, over the barber’s roof—but this barber was no longer the father of Jean and Joseph; he died of tuberculosis; it goes with the trade, his wife would say, always having to breathe hair—the corrugated-iron roof still carried the same load of ficus berries, bits of crumpled paper, and old cigarette butts.
She was there, her hair still abundant but turned white years ago, still erect despite her seventy-two years; she looked ten years younger because she was so slender and her strength was still evident—they were all like that in the family, a clan of lean people with a nonchalant manner whose energy was inexhaustible; old age did not seem to have any hold on them. At fifty his half-mute Uncle Émile1 looked like a young man. The grandmother had died without bowing her head. And as for his mother, toward whom he was now running, it seemed that nothing could erode her gentle endurance, since decades of exhausting labor had spared the young woman in her that Cormery as a child had admired with all his heart.
When he arrived on the doorstep, his mother opened the door and threw herself in his arms. And there, as she did
