Letters from my Windmill Part 19

Stretched out on his cus.h.i.+on, 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 impa.s.sive, 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 s.h.i.+fty 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 impa.s.sively 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! n.o.body saw anything.... By chance, just then a couple of fellow Zionists pa.s.s 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. n.o.body 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--pa.s.ses 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 gra.s.shoppers. It's a good living, I'd say. In any case, it has the great advantage that you can just walk into it, without pa.s.sing 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 cafe 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 cafe 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 f.a.gs, this sunless Sunday has turned out quite well.

The yard in front of the Bureau is packed with shabbily dressed Arabs.

Fifteen of them, in their burnouses, are squatting there along the wall, turning it into a sort of lobby. This Bedouin area--despite being in the open air--gives off a very strong smell of human flesh. Moving quickly past.... I find the interpreter occupied with two large, loud-mouthed Arabs, quite naked under their filthy blankets, madly miming some story or other about a stolen chain. I sit down on a mat in a corner and look on.... The Milianah's interpreter's uniform is very fetching, and how well he carries it! They are made for each other. The uniform is sky blue with black frogging and s.h.i.+ny gold b.u.t.tons. With fair tightly curled hair and a light-skin, he cuts a fine figure, this hussar in blue, and is full of fun and strange tales. He is naturally talkative--he speaks many languages, and is a bit of a religious sceptic; he knew Renan at the Oriental School!--a great amateur sportsman, he is equally at ease in an Arab tent or at the Sub-prefect's soirees. He dances the mazurka as well as anyone, and makes couscous better than anyone. To sum up, he's a Parisian, and he's my sort of man. No wonder the women are mad about him.... He is a sharp dresser, and only the Arab Bureau's sergeant is in the same league, the sergeant--who, with his uniform of fine material and mother of pearl b.u.t.toned leggings, causes envy, and despair, in the garrison. Our man is on attachment to the Bureau, and he is excused fatigues and is often seen in the streets, white gloved, his hair freshly curled, and large files under his arm. He is admired and he is feared. He is authoritative.

To be sure, this story of the stolen chain threatens to become an epic.

Bye-bye! I shan't wait for the end.

The Bureau area is in uproar as I leave. The crowd is crus.h.i.+ng round a tall, pale, proud, local man dressed in a black burnous. A week ago, this man fought a panther in the Zaccar. The panther is dead; but the man has lost half his left arm. In the morning and at night he comes to have his wounds dressed at the Bureau, and every time, he is stopped in the yard and has to re-tell his story. He speaks slowly, with beautifully guttural voice. From time to time he pulls his burnous to one side and shows his left arm, strapped to his chest and wrapped in b.l.o.o.d.y blankets.

The moment I come into the street a violent storm breaks. Rain, thunder, lightning, sirocco.... Quickly, I take shelter in the first available doorway, and fall amongst a bunch of bohemians, crowded into the archways of a Moorish courtyard. It adjoins the Milianah mosque, and is a regular refuge for the Muslim dest.i.tute. They call it the _Courtyard of the Poor_.

Large, emaciated, lousy, and threatening, greyhounds range around me.

Backed up against the gallery pillars, I try to keep control of myself and don't talk to anyone, as I try to look unconcernedly at the rain bouncing off the flagstones. The bohemians are lying about carelessly.

Close by me is a young woman, almost beautiful, with her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and legs uncovered, and thick iron bracelets on her wrists and ankles. She is singing a strange tune consisting of three melancholic, nasal notes, while she is breast feeding a naked, reddish-bronze child, and fills a mortar with barley with her free arm. The wind-blown rain sometimes soaks the arms of the nursing woman and the body of the child. The bohemian girl completely ignores this and keeps singing during the gusts, while still piling up the barley and giving suck.

The storm abates and gives me a chance to leave the courtyard of Miracles and make my way towards dinner at Sid'Omar's, now imminent....

As I cross the main square, I run into my Jew of recent memory again.

He is leaning on his consultant; his witnesses are following happily behind him, and a bunch of naughty, little Jewish boys skip around him.... They are all beaming. The consultant is taking charge of the affair; he will ask for two thousand francs compensation from the tribunal.

Dinner at Sid'Omar's is sumptuous. The dining room opens onto a Moorish courtyard, where two or three fountains are playing.... It's an excellent Turkish meal, whose highlights are _poulet aux amandes, couscous a la vanille_, and _tortue a la viande_--a bit heavy, but a gourmet meal nevertheless--and biscuits made with honey called _bouchees du kadi_.... For wine--nothing but champagne. Sid'Omar managed to drink some despite Muslim law--while the servers were looking away.... After dinner we go into our host's room where we are served with sweetmeats, pipes, and coffee.... The furnis.h.i.+ngs of this room are spa.r.s.e: a divan, several mats, and a large high bed at the back scattered with gold embroidered red cus.h.i.+ons.... A Turkish painting of the exploits of a certain Hamadi hangs upon the wall.

Turkish painters only seem to use one colour per canvas. This canvas is decidedly green. The sea, the sky, the s.h.i.+ps, even the admiral himself, everything is green, and deep green at that!... Arabs usually retire early, so, once I have finished my coffee and smoked my pipe, I bid goodnight to my host and leave him to his wives.

Now, where to round off my evening? Well, it's too early for bed, the spahi soldiers haven't sounded the retreat on their bugles, yet.

Moreover, Sid'Omar's gold cus.h.i.+ons were dancing fabulous farandoles round me and making sleep impossible.... I'm outside the theatre, let's go in for a moment.

The Milianah theatre is an old fur store, refurbished as far as possible to make a stage and auditorium. The lighting is made up of large oil lamps which are refilled during the interval. The audience stands; only the orchestra sits, but on benches. The galleries are quite swish with cane chairs.... All around the room there is a long, dark corridor with no wooden flooring.... You might as well be in the street, it has absolutely nothing in it. The play has already started when I arrive. The actors aren't at all bad, the men at least; they get their training from life.... They are mainly amateurs, soldiers of the third division, and the regiment is proud of them and supports them every night.

As for the women, well!... It always is and always will be the same in small provincial theatres, the women are always pretentious, artificial, and overact outrageously.... And yet, among the women there are two very young Jewesses, beginners at the drama, who catch my eye.... Their parents are in the audience and seem enchanted. They are convinced that their daughters are going to earn a fortune on the stage. The legendary Rachel, Israeli millionaire, and actress, has an orient-wide reputation with the Jews.

Nothing could be more comical and pathetic than these two little Jewesses on the boards.... They stand timidly in a corner of the scene, powdered, made-up, and as stiff as a board in low cut dresses. They are cold and they are embarra.s.sed. Occasionally, they gabble a phrase without understanding its meaning, and as they speak, gaze vacantly into the auditorium.

I leave the theatre.... I hear shouting in the surrounding blackness from somewhere in the square.... Some Maltese settling a point, no doubt, at the point of a knife....I return slowly along the ramparts to the hotel. A gorgeous scent of oranges and thujas wafts up from the plain. The air is mild and the sky almost clear.... At the end of the road, yonder, an old, walled phantom reaches upwards--the debris of some old temple. This wall is sacred. Every day, Arab women come to hang ex-voto gifts, bits of haiks and foutas, long tresses of red hair tied with silver wire, and bits of burnous.... All this dances about in the warm breeze, lit by a narrow ray of moonlight....

THE LOCUSTS

Just one more souvenir of Algeria and then--back to the windmill!...

I couldn't sleep the night I arrived at the farm of the Sahel. Maybe it was the new country, the stress of the voyage, the barking jackals, on top of the irritating, oppressive, and completely asphyxiating heat. It felt as though the mosquito nets were keeping the air out with the insects.... As I opened my window at first light, I saw a heavy summer mist, slow-moving, fringed with black and pink, and floating in the air like smoke over a battle field. Not a leaf moved in the lovely gardens stretched out before me, where, the well-s.p.a.ced vines, that gave such sweet wine, were enjoying full suns.h.i.+ne on the slopes. There were also European fruit trees sheltered in a shady spot, and small orange and mandarin trees in long, closely packed lines. Everything had the same gloomy look about it, with that certain limpness of leaf waiting for the storm. Even the banana trees, those great, pale-green reeds, usually on the move as some light breeze tangles their fine, light foliage, stood straight and silent in their symmetrical plumage.

I stayed there for a while looking at this fabulous plantation, where seemingly all types of the world's trees could be found, each one giving exotic flowers and fruit, in its proper season. Between the wheat fields and the ma.s.sive cork-oaks, a stream shone, and refreshed--the eye at least--on an airless morning. As I approved the fineness and order of it all: the beautiful farm with its Moorish arcades and terraces, brilliantly white in the dawn, and its surrounding stables and barns, I recalled that it was twenty years since these brave settlers set up home in the valley of the Sahel. At first, they found only a workman's shack, and ground haphazardly planted with dwarf palms and mastic trees. Everything was yet to be done; everything to be built. At any time, there could be an attack from Arabs. They had to leave the plough out for cover in case of a shoot-out. Then there was the sickness, the ophthalmia, the fevers; and the failed harvest, the groping inexperience, and the fight against a narrow-minded administration--always putting off its prevarications.

What a world of work, and fatigue, and having to watch their backs all the time!

Even now, despite the end of the bad times, and the hard-won good fortune, both the settler and his wife were up before anyone else on the farm. At an unG.o.dly hour they could be heard coming and going, overlooking the workers' coffee, in the huge kitchens on the ground floor. Shortly afterwards, a bell was rung and the workmen set out for the day's work. There were some Burgundy wine-growers, Kabyle workers in rags and red tarbooshes, bare-legged Mahonian terrace workers, Maltese, and people from Lucca; men from many places and therefore more difficult to manage. Outside the door, the farmer curtly gave out the day's work to everyone. When he was finished, this fine man looked up and scrutinised the sky anxiously. Then, he noticed me at the window: