Abduction (11 page)

Then, seeking to have the final word in revenge for my rudeness, he said mockingly, “Anyway, you won't get far in that heap of junk. And then you'll be left high and dry, with that useless hammer and poofy monkey wrench of yours!”

A gust of wind blew the smoke from the exhaust pipe into my nostrils as the van sped off towards the Kouba hills. I followed the vehicle with my eyes, overcome by a new fear – of being arrested for the crime I was condemned to commit.

You'd better not get caught by the police, think of your daughter
was, in substance, the kidnapper's warning.

“Meriem…”

I wanted to take refuge in her arms, put my head between her breasts, tell her everything, share the tragedy of the ignominious deed I was about to perpetrate.

I moaned, suffocated by the coming solitude.

I got into the car and huddled up on my seat. A good quarter of an hour passed. All that time I had the impression that a huge foot was pressing down on me and crushing me under its weight.

At last I started the engine and checked that there weren't any policemen around. I drove about a dozen yards, then suddenly cut across the yellow line and took the motorway in the opposite direction, towards the park.

I stuffed the screwdriver and then, after a moment's thought, the hammer into an old bag that was lying around in the car. With a pang of anguish, I crossed the road that separated me from the limbless man's shop before I suddenly felt all my determination leave me.

I must have staggered because a passer-by muttered reproachfully, “Well well, getting in a state like that so early in the day… May God curse Satan and his scheming mind!” I rushed into a little café. The waiter served me coffee in a dirty-looking cup. I drank it down in one and ordered another. The waiter laughed.

“A nice cup of coffee tastes good even if you're carrying all of Algeria's problems on your shoulders. Don't forget to sweeten it with lots of sugar if you're in a bitter frame of mind! If I were president, I'd put a spoonful of sugar in every Algerian's head!”

I responded to the waiter's cheerful chatter with a mutter that discouraged all further conversation. All the same, I followed his advice. I forced myself to sip the thick, sugary liquid. The feeling of having had my legs amputated gradually faded. The telephone rang. The icon announcing a text message blinked on the screen.

I opened the message. I stared at the two lines on the tiny screen, first in incomprehension, then in horror:

10 – 1 = 9

9 – 1 = ?

I sat up with a start, knocking my cup over. I paid the waiter, who was now grumbling, “I told you not to overdo it with the coffee. Everyone's so highly strung in this country – no one listens to anyone!”

As if in a nightmare, I reached the booth, a garishly painted breezeblock cube with a corrugated iron roof. The limbless man was resting in an old wickerwork armchair like some enormous cucumber wrapped in a sleeveless coat. The crate on wheels was standing by one of the walls. He was listening to the radio with his head hanging to one side. I vaguely heard that the management of Al-Jazeera had just removed the results of a poll of thirty thousand Arab Internet users from its website. “Fifty-five per cent of them,” the journalist exclaimed, “support the recent kamikaze attacks in Algeria!”

The handicapped man was surprised to see me, but he greeted me with his unfailing smile.

“Did you hear that, doctor? No one wants to see Arabs die more than other Arabs, it seems! Nice timing – I'm dying for a drop of coffee after all that twaddle! Would you mind pouring me some?”

He gestured with his eyes towards the Thermos under his table decorated with their ‘anti-theft' Koranic verses.

“Go on, have a cup with me, doctor.”

“I'm not…”

“
…not a doctor
, I know, doctor. But you deserve to be,” he added with a guffaw. “You know, you work too hard for a civil servant. You've gone all pale and you're sweating even though it's cool. You should go and see…”

“A
real
doctor, right?”

“I don't have to spell things out to you!”

I had trouble swallowing.
No, dear old Moh, if the brain in that elongated head of yours could only fathom one-thousandth of my intentions towards you, legs would sprout miraculously from your backside and you would scarper as fast as your legs could carry you away from this screwdriver-carrying doctor.
Without further thought, without being able to utter the slightest riposte, I held out the cup to him.
My task now is to manage to hate you so much in the next few seconds that I can then slit your throat.

I didn't understand what caused his smile, at once patient and sarcastic.

“I… Sorry… sorry… I'm an idiot, I forgot your… I mean…”

Even my ears must have gone red, for I was holding out a cup to a man with no arms. Moh's eyes twinkled as if he'd just watched a comedy sketch.

“Got you there, doctor! You're not the only one, though. If you only knew the number of people who try to shake my hand or hand me a banknote before they realise that they have to look after the till themselves. Anyway, for the cup, look down here to my right, there's something my son made for me… There, that's it.”

He had a son
. A lump of icy dirt had formed in my stomach.
And I, bastard son of a bastard, have a daughter. And she's worth more than anything you could possibly raise in your defence!

The device was made out of bits and bobs, a metal bar with a board on the end with two holes in it, one bigger than the other.

“It's not complicated. You fit the cup into the first one; the other's for a bowl. Hold the thingummy-gob – that's what my son calls it – up to me, then stick the straw between my lips.”

He sucked in the coffee with visible relish. I poured myself a cup too. I grimaced as I swallowed the bitter brew. My grimace didn't escape the cigarette-seller's beady eye.

“I can't offer you any sugar because of diabetes.”

The straw in his mouth made him mash his words.

“Because you've got…”

“No, no! When you're in my situation, it's better to know when to stop! But who knows – maybe I'll get that diabetes thing one day or another! I'm scared of God when He tries to show a bit of humour. So let's pray He keeps his sense of moderation.”

“Do you think Allah has shown moderation towards you?”

“Yes, because I could've been blind, dumb and deaf as well. I can find any number of creatures whose fate is far uglier than mine. From that point of view, I'm privileged. And maybe, in return for my submissiveness, Allah is planning to offer me a prime position next to His throne with all the conveniences you can imagine: as many
houris
as I can handle, milk, honey, wine and all the rest… Unless…”

He dropped his straw. After wiping it with his paper tissue, he put it back in his mouth. I thought: “What if I smothered you? You couldn't even put up a fight…”

“Thank you…”

“You were saying, a prime position?”

“Unless he forgets me, like a craftsman chucking a reject part on the scrapheap. The only thing I ask myself about what will happen to me after death, is this: will I have a full set of legs and arms? Let's change the subject, brother, because we are flirting dangerously with blasphemy. I don't want to risk losing my heavenly couch because of a word out of place!”

I felt the screwdriver through my bag. This man was chatty, his head waggling from side to side in time with his words, not allowing me to gather my thoughts. Anyway, there was no chance of doing anything for the moment; there were too many people walking between the bus stop and the nearby buildings. A teenager walked up and asked for a packet of Marlboros.

“Real or fake?” the shopkeeper asked good-naturedly.

“The fake ones from Niger?”

“That's right, my friend,” Moh agreed. “But take the real ones from Hong Kong. They're a little more expensive, but worth it – they're guaranteed against lung disease, friend. Those Chinese have invented machines that take out the cancer grains, one by one. The Niger cigarettes are made illegally by uneducated Blacks; they're a total disaster.”

With a wink, Moh asked me to fetch a packet of cigarettes out of the cardboard box stashed under the table. I did as he said, regretting bitterly the trap of familiarity I had fallen into.

The radio was now playing the whining quavering of a Middle Eastern female singer about the joys of living by the Nile. When the teenager had gone, I said, as much to pad out the conversation as to contain the storm inside me, “Did you make that up, that stuff about fake and real cigarettes?”

“Yes, of course I did. Both of them have been smuggled in from some African country, but my customers feel better if they think they've chosen the right ones.

“That's a…”

He chuckled. “Of course it's a lie, but you're not really going to demand honesty from me. For lack of arms and legs, I've had to develop my tongue. May God forgive me for exaggerating a little! On the other hand, He didn't have to make me this way. Tell me…”

He hesitated, trying to make his cunning look seem complicit.

“Aren't you working today or did you sneak out of the office?”

“What makes you think that?”

My tone was too snappy. He shook his head.

“Excuse me for saying so, but you look harassed. And… have you seen your jacket?… Next to the left pocket?”

A big greasy stain flecked my jacket where it had touched the bag. I was seized by sudden irritation at the handicapped man's prying eyes. I bent my nose over my cup of coffee before mumbling, “My boss gave me the day off. He doesn't think I look good either. A stomach bug probably.”

“My son'll be round soon, after school. If you want, you can ask him to go and get you some medicine from the pharmacy. If you're not in too much of a hurry, that is…”

“You have a son?”

He sniggered – but it was no longer the same cheerful laugh.

“You're wondering how this sausage-man managed to find himself a son? And how low did a woman have to stoop to tie her life to his?”

“No, I…”

His wrinkled face with its thin crop of hair lit up.

“I'm not lying this time. Want me to tell you a secret?”

I didn't answer. My face closed.
There's no way I'm listening to you, no way you're going to save your skin and my daughter lose hers – I can see right through this sob story!

Moh sighed and the straw fell out of his mouth. I pretended I hadn't seen anything. But the man obviously wanted to talk; he seized the opportunity – a rare one for him – of having a supposedly benevolent ear available.

“My son is the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me. He's a little over 14 and he's the one who takes care of me. Well, washing, brushing my teeth and… all the other stuff… I'd be unable to manage by myself… Think of the number of erm, personal things for which hands are essential. I don't have to draw you a picture for you to understand, with all due respect of course… It's a terrible chore and yet my young son carries it out morning and evening with no complaints and without showing any disgust. He even joked about the colour of my shit one day when I'd eaten too much beetroot!”

The man looked down.

“As for my wife, that's something different. I should probably say my ex-wife. When I was younger, my father was a well-to-do shopkeeper, whereas my future wife's family was poor and heavily in debt to him. It was a good deal for everyone when my in-laws gave us their daughter: for my old man, who'd been dreaming of getting rid of me since my birth; for the young woman's parents, who wiped off their debts in one go and even received an allowance for looking after me; and for me, the nearly-nothing, the less-than-dwarf, who gained a nurse and a wife at the same time. Everyone was delighted, apart from the beautiful young girl whose opinion no one had asked. That wasn't common practice in the country in my day! Since then, my father has gone bankrupt and had the unfortunate idea to kick the bucket as a result. I've even had time to have two children by my wife, a girl and a boy. But my wife couldn't stand me any more. She insulted me, she kept saying…”

He went off on another round of giggles. (I thought cruelly that, if he'd had hands, he would have slapped his thighs.)

“She kept saying, with all due respect, that a cock stuck to a sub-monkey doesn't make a husband. She isn't wrong, I must confess. She wanted to remarry a man who was, let's say, all there. My daughter very quickly took her mother's side. At school she told them I was dead. My son, though, carried on loving me. I don't know why, actually – I didn't rock him, I didn't play football with him, I didn't help him with his homework, all those little things that fathers are supposed to do with their kids, not to mention spanking them when they get in trouble.”

He was interrupted by a brief sigh.

“My kid is a little drop of heavenly mint poured into my life potion at the very last moment, maybe a little sign of regret from the Almighty.”

He cleared his throat, overcome with emotion.

“The funny thing is that the new husband, a good lad, pulled some strings to get me this breezeblock box to sleep in and trade from.”

He motioned with his head towards the metal sheet that served as a roof.

“Can you guess what my beautiful store used to be?”

“Er, no.”

“Take a closer look. Forget the paint and the little sign, take the roof off and cover the lot with some dirty thatch… Never seen one before? Maybe even at the foot of your block of flats?”

Irritated, I almost replied that I hated riddles before I started in embarrassment, gripped by a nervous desire to laugh.

“You've really squatted a rubbish tip? And no one objected?”