In the Country of Others Read online

  Later that day, when he brought Aïcha back from school, they found Mathilde sitting on the steps that led down to the garden. The little girl ran into her mother’s open arms and thought that her prayers had not been in vain. Mathilde was going to live. Hail Mary.

  * * *

  Once she had recovered, Mathilde was happy about the weight she’d lost. In the mirror she saw her pale face, her drawn features, the bags under her eyes. She got into the habit of laying a sheet on the grass in front of the house’s French window and spending her mornings in the sun with the children while they played. She was thrilled by the arrival of spring. Every day she observed new buds flowering on the branches. She crushed the fragrant orange-tree flowers between her fingers, she leaned in close to the fragile lilac. Before her the uncultivated fields were completely covered in blood-red poppies and orange wildflowers. Here there was nothing to prevent the birds flying freely. No telegraph poles, no engine noise, no walls where they might smash their tiny skulls. Since the return of the good weather she’d been hearing the twittering of hundreds of invisible birds, hiding in tree branches that quivered with the echo of their songs. The farm’s isolation, which had once so terrified her and sent her into the depths of depression, now captivated her in these gorgeous spring days.

  One afternoon Amine came to join them. He lay down next to his son with a nonchalance that surprised Aïcha. “I’ve met some amusing people,” he said to his wife. “I think you’d like them.” He told her about Dragan’s visit to their property, his fanciful plans, and explained all the benefits that they might gain from this partnership. Mathilde frowned. She hadn’t forgotten how Bouchaib had taken advantage of her husband’s naiveté and she feared that he was once again being lured into trouble by false promises.

  “And why did he ask you? Roger Mariani has whole fields full of orange trees, and he’s better known around here.”

  Amine, hurt by his wife’s suspicions, stood up abruptly.

  “Well, you can ask him yourself. He and his wife have invited us to lunch on Sunday.”

  On Sunday morning Mathilde kept complaining that she had nothing to wear. In the end she put on her blue dress, which was so old-fashioned, and she blamed Amine for his failure to understand her. She dreamed of Dior’s New Look collection, which was all the rage with the European women in the new town.

  “I wore this dress during the war, you know. It’s completely unfashionable now. What will they think when they see me in this?”

  “Just wear the haik. That way you don’t have to worry about fashion.”

  Amine laughed and Mathilde hated him. She had woken up in a bad mood and this lunch, which should have excited her, now felt like a chore.

  “But what sort of lunch is it? Will it just be the four of us or will there be other guests? Are we supposed to dress up or not?”

  Amine shrugged. “How should I know?”

  The Palosis lived in the new town, near the Transatlantic Hotel, and their house had a wonderful view over the city and its minarets. The couple were waiting for them on the front steps, shaded from the burning sun by a little orange-and-white awning. As Amine and Mathilde got out of the car and walked toward the front door, the doctor held his large arms open wide, like a father greeting his children. Dragan Palosi wore an elegant sea-blue suit and a wide tie. His polished shoes shone as brightly as his thick but neatly trimmed mustache. He had fat cheeks and fleshy lips and his entire being seemed to exude a sort of round-bellied appetite for life and pleasure. He waved his hands then placed them on Mathilde’s cheeks, as if she were a little girl. His hands were enormous and covered in dark hairs, the hands of a butcher or a murderer, and Mathilde couldn’t help imagining Dragan Palosi using those massive hands to pull a baby from a woman’s vagina. She felt the cold touch of a gold signet ring against her cheek. He wore it on his ring finger, the tip of which was white because the ring was so tight.

  Beside him stood a blonde woman. Mathilde found it hard to look at her face or admire her legs because her gaze was irresistibly drawn to the woman’s enormous, breathtaking, shockingly oversized breasts. The hostess gave Mathilde a lazy smile and held out a limp hand. She had the latest hairstyle and wore a dress that looked like it had come straight from a magazine, and yet her every atom oozed vulgarity, a total lack of elegance. There was the way she’d applied her orange lipstick, the way she put her hand on her hip, and, above all, the way she clicked her tongue at the end of every sentence. She seemed eager to form an idiotic complicity with Mathilde based solely on their shared gender and nationality. Corinne was French, “from Dunkirk,” she repeated, rolling her Rs. Mathilde felt ridiculous handing Corinne two dishes containing a kouglof and a fig tart. The hostess held the dishes with the wary awkwardness of someone holding a baby for the first time. Amine was ashamed of his wife and Mathilde sensed this. Corinne was not the kind of woman to concern herself with desserts, to waste her time, her youth, and her beauty in an overheated kitchen, among servants and wailing children. Dragan perhaps noticed her unease because he thanked Mathilde with a warmth and kindness that moved her. He lifted up the cloth, leaned down with his wide nose an inch or two from the cakes and took a deep, long breath. “Mmm, how wonderful!” he exclaimed, and Mathilde blushed.

  And while Corinne led Mathilde into the living room, pointing out a chair and offering her something to drink, while she sat facing her and told her about her life, Mathilde kept thinking: She’s a whore. She paid no attention to what the young woman was saying because she felt certain that it was all lies and she refused to be duped. If people came here, to this lost city, it was so they could lie, reinvent themselves. She was obliged to listen to the story of how Corinne had met the rich Hungarian gynecologist, but she didn’t believe for a second that it had been love at first sight, as Corinne claimed. Over aperitifs, while Mathilde drank several glasses of an excellent port, she thought only of one thing. She watched the Moroccan butler come and go, she observed her husband’s radiant smile, she stared at the signet ring that was strangling the gynecologist’s ring finger and she thought: She’s a whore. Those words echoed inside her skull like machine gun fire. She imagined Corinne in a brothel in Dunkirk, a poor girl numb with shame and cold, a plump and half-naked figure in a nylon slip and ankle socks. No doubt Dragan had helped her out of the gutter; perhaps what he’d felt for her was genuine passion, or at least a noble desire to be her knight in shining armor, but that didn’t change anything. This woman bothered Mathilde, she disgusted and fascinated her. She wanted to stay and watch her, and at the same time she wanted to run far away from her.

  * * *

  —

  Several times during the aperitifs, when the conversation sank into an embarrassing silence, Dragan would talk about those magnificent cakes that he couldn’t wait to eat and he would beam a complicit smile at Mathilde. He had always gotten along better with women. As a child he’d hated the all-boys’ school where his parents had sent him, felt oppressed by its unrelieved masculinity. He loved women not as a seducer but as a friend, a brother. In his adult life, which had been marked by exile and restlessness, women had always been his allies. They understood the melancholy that suffocated him sometimes, they knew what it was to be reduced to the arbitrariness of their gender just as he’d been reduced to the absurdity of his religion. From women he’d learned a mix of resignation and pugnacity, he’d realized that joy was a form of vengeance against those who sought to deny you.

  Amine and Mathilde were surprised by the refinement of the Palosis’ home. Seeing them as a couple, it was hard to imagine such delicacy, such meticulousness, in the furnishings, in the choice of wall coverings, the blend of colors. They were sitting in a charming salon with a large bay window that opened on to a beautifully kept garden. Bougainvilleas grew on the back wall and the wisteria was in flower. Beneath a jacaranda Corinne had set a table and chairs. “But it’s too hot to eat outside, don’t you think?”
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  Every time she spoke or laughed, her breasts would rise up as if they were about to pop out of her dress, as if the nipples might suddenly appear before their eyes like buds blossoming in spring. Amine couldn’t take his eyes off them and he smiled hungrily, more handsome than ever. After all these years living outdoors, his face had been sculpted by the wind and the sun, his eyes were filled with sky, and his skin gave off the most wonderful smell. Mathilde was well aware of the effect he had on women. She wondered then if it was really for her sake that he had accepted this invitation, as he’d claimed, or if he’d been lured here by this woman’s lascivious curves.

  “Your wife is very elegant,” Amine had remarked as they first arrived, languidly kissing Corinne’s hand. “Oh, but these cakes smell so delicious,” Dragan had replied. “Your wife is a cordon bleu chef!” When he kept talking about the cakes during the meal, Mathilde wanted to disappear. She put her hands to her temples to adjust her hairstyle, which was collapsing. Sweat trickled down her forehead and her blue dress had stains under the armpits and between her breasts. Mathilde had spent the morning working in the kitchen, then she’d had to quickly feed the children and give Tamo her instructions. The car had stalled six miles from the farm and she’d had to get out and push it because Amine claimed she couldn’t steer it properly. As she lifted a too-dense liver mousse to her mouth, she thought that her husband was a liar: he’d only made her push the car because he hadn’t wanted to mess up his best jacket. It was his fault that she’d arrived at the Palosis’ house in this state, sweating and exhausted, her dress rumpled, her legs covered in insect bites. She complimented Corinne on her delicious starter and slid her hand under the table to scratch her itching calves.

  She wanted to ask, “What did you do during the war?” because it seemed like the only way of getting to know people. But Amine, his tongue loosened by the white wine, started talking about Moroccan politics with Dragan and the women smiled silently at each other. Corinne let ash fall from her cigarette and it burned the fringe of the rug. Wearily, her eyes glazed from the alcohol, she asked Mathilde to accompany her into the garden. Mathilde reluctantly agreed. Let her do the talking, she told herself, feeling stubborn. Corinne took a pack of cigarettes from a little pedestal table and offered one to Mathilde. “You must bring your children next time. I made some sweets and there are a few old toys in the room at the back. The previous owners left them here,” she explained in a voice tense with repressed melancholy. Corinne sat on one of the steps leading down to the garden. “When did you arrive in Morocco?” she asked. Mathilde recounted her story, and as she slowly put the past into words she realized that this was the first time anyone had listened to her like this, with such kindly interest. Corinne had landed in Casablanca just after the start of the war. Dragan—who’d had to flee Hungary, then Germany, then France—had been told by a Russian friend that Morocco was the ideal place to make a new start. In the white town on the Atlantic coast he’d found employment as a doctor in a well-known clinic. He’d earned plenty of money, but the director’s reputation and the nature of the operations he was performing had ended up making him quit. They’d decided to move to Meknes, with its easygoing atmosphere and its orchards.

  “What sort of operations were they?” asked Mathilde, intrigued by Corinne’s conspiratorial tone.

  Corinne looked behind her, inched closer to Mathilde and whispered: “Rather extraordinary operations, if you want my opinion. Did you know that people come from all over Europe for that? The doctor is either a genius or a madman, but apparently he’s capable of transforming a man into a woman!”

  At the end of the school term the nuns asked to see Aïcha’s parents. Amine and Mathilde turned up outside the gate a quarter of an hour early and Sister Marie-Solange led them through to the Mother Superior’s office. As they walked down the long gravel path and past the chapel, Amine turned to look at it. What did that god of theirs have in mind for him? Sister Marie-Solange invited them to sit down in front of the long cedar desk with files stacked on top of it. There was a crucifix hanging above the fireplace. When the Mother Superior entered her office, they stood up and Amine prepared himself for an onslaught. He and his wife had spent all night discussing the possible reasons for this meeting: their continual lateness, Aïcha’s clothes, her mystical ravings. They’d argued. “Stop telling her stories that scare her,” Amine had hissed. “Buy us a car,” Mathilde had replied. But faced with the headmistress, they were on the same side. Whatever she said, they would defend their child.

  The nun gestured for them to sit down. She noticed the height difference between Amine and his wife and this seemed to amuse her. She was probably thinking that only a very modest man or a man who was deeply in love could accept a wife who was a head taller than him. She sat in her chair and tried to open the desk drawer, but she couldn’t find the key.

  “Anyway, Sister Marie-Solange and I wanted to tell you how pleased we are with Aïcha.”

  Mathilde’s legs started to shake. She’d been expecting the worst. “She is a shy and somewhat wild little girl and it wasn’t easy to tame her. But her marks are exceptional.”

  She pushed toward them a small notebook that she’d finally managed to extract from the drawer. Her bony finger pointed at the figures and they noticed her white, neatly trimmed nails, as thin as a child’s.

  “Aïcha’s results are well above average in every subject. The reason we wished to see you is that we believe your daughter should skip a year. How would you feel about that?”

  The two nuns watched them, both smiling radiantly. They seemed disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm in the parents’ response. Amine and Mathilde didn’t move. They stared at the notebook and seemed to be having a silent conversation, brows furrowed and lips pursed. Amine had not taken the baccalauréat and his memories of school mostly consisted of being caned by the teacher as a warning not to misbehave. As for Mathilde, her main memory was of the cold; it had been so freezing in her school that she hadn’t been able to hold a pen. It was Mathilde who spoke first:

  “If you think it will be good for her.” She almost added: “You know her better than we do.”

  When they saw Aïcha again, waiting patiently for them outside on the street, they looked at her oddly, as if seeing her for the first time. This child, they thought, was a stranger, an unsolvable riddle. It shocked them that this frail little girl with her knock knees and her frowning face, this little girl with her big hair, could be so intelligent. At home she didn’t speak much. She spent her evenings playing with the fringe of the large blue rug and she was always having sneezing fits because of the dust. She never told them what she’d been doing at school; she kept her miseries, her joys, and her friendships to herself. When strangers came to the house she ran away as quickly as a mouse in the presence of a cat; she disappeared into her room or out into the fields. And wherever she was, she was always running, her long thin legs seeming to separate from the rest of her body. Her feet were so far ahead of her sweating torso, her swinging arms, her crimson face, that it looked as if she were merely trying to catch up with them. She didn’t appear to know anything and yet she never asked for help with her homework, and when Mathilde bent over her exercise books she could only admire her daughter’s neat handwriting, her poise, her tenacity.

  Aïcha asked no questions about the meeting. They told her that they were proud of her and that they were going to celebrate by eating lunch at a café in the new town. She took the hand that Mathilde offered her and followed them. The only thing that seemed to make her happy was the pile of books that her mother gave her. “I think you deserve a reward.” They sat on the terrace, beneath a large, dusty, red awning. Amine poured a few drops of beer into Aïcha’s glass. He told her that this was a special day and that she could have a drink with them. Aïcha stuck her nose into her glass. The beer had no smell so she raised the glass to her lips and swallowed the bitter liquid. Her mother wiped the foam from he
r cheek with a gloved hand. Aïcha liked it a lot, the ice-cold liquid that slid down her throat and cooled her stomach. She didn’t ask for more, she just pushed her glass closer to the middle of the table and without really thinking about it her father poured some more beer into it. He was still a little shaken. His daughter looked like a street urchin, yet she could speak Latin and she was better than all the French girls at mathematics. “Exceptionally talented,” the teacher had said.

  Amine and Mathilde started to get slightly drunk. They ordered some fried food. They laughed and ate with their fingers. Aïcha didn’t say much. Her mind was fogged over. She had the impression that her body was lighter than before and she could hardly feel her arms at all. There was a sort of strange disconnect between her thoughts and her feelings, like a melody no longer anchored to its rhythm, and this perturbed her. She felt a sudden burst of love for her parents and then, within a few seconds, that feeling became alien to her; it was like a poem she’d learned whose last verse she couldn’t remember. She found it hard to concentrate and she didn’t laugh when a group of boys stopped outside the café and performed acrobatics to amuse the customers. She felt terribly sleepy and she could hardly keep her eyes open. Her parents stood up to wave to a couple of Armenian shopkeepers to whom they sold fruit and almonds. Aïcha heard them say her name. Her father was speaking louder than usual and he put his hand on his daughter’s bony shoulder. She smiled with her mouth open. She looked at her father’s black hand and pressed her cheek against it. The grown-ups asked her: “How old are you?” “Do you like school?” She didn’t reply. There was something she’d forgotten but she knew it was something happy and it was this last thought that stayed with her as she fell asleep with her head on the table.

  She woke, her cheeks wet from her mother’s kisses. They walked toward the Avenue de la République and the Empire cinema with its facade in the style of a Greek theater. Her parents bought her an ice cream, which she ate on the street, slowly and in a way that her father thought so obscene that he grabbed the cone from her hands and threw it in a bin. “You’ll stain your dress,” he said, to justify this sudden attack. They went to see High Noon. Groups of teenagers laughed while men in suits argued loudly about the news. A young woman was selling chocolates and cigarettes. Aïcha was so small that she had to sit on her father’s lap to see the screen. The lights went out and the old Moroccan usherette who’d led them to their seats shouted at a group of teenagers to shut up: “Sed foumouk!” Aïcha leaned against Amine, as if dazed by the warm feel of his skin. She buried her face in her father’s neck, indifferent to the images on the screen or to the flashlight that the usherette was waving at a young man who’d lit a cigarette. During the film Mathilde dug her fingers into her daughter’s hair and gently tugged at each strand, sending shivers from the back of Aïcha’s neck to the soles of her feet. When they emerged from the theater her hair was even more puffed up and frizzy than usual and she felt ashamed at being seen like that in the street.