The Angels Die Read online

  Gypsies were colourful, fascinating, crazy characters, and they all had a religious sense of responsibility towards their families. They could disagree, yell at one another, and even come to blows, but they all deferred to the Mama, who kept an eye on everything.

  Ah, the Mama! She’d given me her blessing the moment she’d seen me. She was a kind of impoverished dowager, lounging on her embroidered cushions at the far end of her caravan, which was piled high with gifts and relics; the tribe worshipped her like a sacred cow. I’d have liked to throw myself into her arms and sink into her flesh.

  I felt comfortable among the gypsies. My days were filled with fun and surprises. They gave me food and let me enjoy myself as I wished … Then, one morning, the caravans were gone. All that was left of the camp was a few traces of their stay: rutted tracks, a few shoes with holes in them, a shawl hanging from a bush, dog mess. Never had a place seemed to me as ruined as this patch abandoned by the gypsies and returned to its bleak former state. For weeks I went back, conjuring up memories in the hope of hearing an echo, a laugh, a voice, but there was no answer, not even the sound of a violin to act as an excuse for my sorrow. With the gypsies gone, I was back to a grim future, to dull, endless days that went round in circles like a wild animal in a cage.

  The days passed but didn’t advance, monotonous, blind, empty; it was as if they were walking over my body.

  At home, I was an extra burden. ‘Go back to the street; may the earth swallow you. Can’t you see we’re working?’

  I was scared of the street.

  You couldn’t go to the military dumping ground any more since the numbers of scavengers had increased, and woe betide anyone who dared fight them over a piece of rubbish.

  I fell back on the railway and spent my time watching out for the train and picturing myself on it. I ended up jumping on. The local train had broken down and was stuck on the rails, like a huge caterpillar about to give up the ghost. Two mechanics were fussing around the locomotive. I approached the last carriage. The door was open. I hoisted myself on board with my partner in misfortune, sat down on an empty sack, and gazed up at the sky through the slits in the roof. I imagined myself travelling across green countryside, bridges and farms, fleeing the ghetto where nothing good ever happened. Suddenly, the carriage started moving. The boy staggered and clung to the wall. The locomotive whistle made me leap to my feet. Outside, the countryside began slowly rolling by. I jumped off first, almost breaking my ankle on the ballast. But the boy wouldn’t let go of the wall. Jump off, I’ll catch you, I shouted. He was paralysed and wouldn’t jump. The more the train gathered speed, the more I panicked. Jump, jump … I started running, the ballast cutting into my feet like broken bottles. The boy was crying. His moaning rose above the din of the livestock carriages. I realised he wasn’t going to jump. It was up to me to get him. As usual. I ran and ran, my chest burning, my feet bleeding. I was two fingers away from gaining a handhold, three fingers, four, ten, thirty … It wasn’t because I was slowing down; the iron monster was growing bolder as the locomotive increased its output of smoke. At the end of a frantic run, I stopped, my legs cut to pieces. All I could do was watch the train get further away until it vanished in the dust.

  I followed the track for many miles, limping under a blazing sun … I caught sight of a figure and rushed towards it, thinking it was the boy. It wasn’t him.

  The sun was starting to go down. I was already a long way from Graba. I had to get home before nightfall, or I might get lost too.

  The widow was at our house, pale with worry. When she saw me on my own, she rushed out into the street and turned even paler than before.

  ‘What have you done with my baby?’ She shook me angrily. ‘Where’s my child? He was with you. You were supposed to look after him.’

  ‘The train —’

  ‘What train?’

  I felt a tightness in my throat. I couldn’t swallow.

  ‘What about the train? Say something!’

  ‘It took him away.’

  Silence.

  The widow didn’t seem to understand. She furrowed her brow. I felt her fingers go limp on my shoulders. Against all expectations, she gave a little laugh and turned pensive. I thought she’d bounce back, sink her claws into me, break up our shack and us with it, but she leant against the wall and slid down to the ground. She stayed like that, with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, a dark look in her eyes. A tear ran down her cheek; she didn’t wipe it away. ‘Whatever God decides, we must accept,’ she sighed in a muted voice. ‘Everything that happens in this world happens according to His will.’

  My mother tried to put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. She shook it off with a gesture of disgust. ‘Don’t touch me. I don’t want your pity. Pity never fed anyone. I don’t need anybody any more. Now that my son’s gone, I can go too. I’ve been wanting to put an end to this lousy life for years. But my son wasn’t right in the head. I couldn’t see him surviving among people who are worse than wolves … I can’t wait to have a word with the One who created me just to make me suffer.’

  ‘Are you mad? What are you talking about? It’s a sin to kill yourself.’

  ‘I don’t think there could possibly be a hell worse than mine, either in the sky or anywhere else.’

  She looked up at me and it was as if the distress of the whole of humanity was concentrated in her eyes.

  ‘Torn to pieces by a train! My God! How can I do away with a child like that after putting him through so much?’

  I was speechless, upset by her ranting.

  She pressed down on the palms of her hands and got unsteadily to her feet. ‘Show me where my baby is. Is there anything left of him for me to bury?’

  ‘He isn’t dead!’ I cried.

  She shuddered. Her eyes struck me with the ferocity of lightning. ‘What? Did you leave my son bleeding on the railway tracks?’

  ‘He wasn’t run over by the train. We got on it, and when the train started, I jumped off and he stayed on. I shouted to him to jump but he didn’t dare. I ran after the train and walked along the rails, but he didn’t get off anywhere.’

  The widow put her head in her hands. Once again, she didn’t seem to understand. Suddenly, she stiffened. I saw her facial expression go from confusion to relief, then from relief to panic, and then from panic to hysteria. ‘Oh, God! My son is lost! They’ll eat him alive. He doesn’t even know how to hold out his hand. Oh, my God! Where’s my baby?’

  She took me by the throat and started to shake me, almost dislocating my neck. My mother and aunt tried to get me away from her; she pushed them back with a kick and, totally losing her mind, started screaming and spinning like a tornado, knocking down everything in her path. Suddenly, she howled and collapsed, her eyes rolled back, her body convulsed.

  My mother got up. She had scratches all over. With amazing calm, she fetched a large jailer’s key and slipped it into the widow’s fist – a common practice with people who fainted from dizziness or shock.

  Dumbfounded, my aunt ordered her daughter to go and fetch Mekki before the madwoman returned to her senses.

  Mekki didn’t beat about the bush. Nora had told him everything. He was all fired up and didn’t want to hear any more. In our family, you hit first, and then you talked. You bastard, I’m going to kill you. He rushed at me and started beating me up. I thought he’d never stop.

  My mother didn’t intervene.

  It was men’s business.

  Having beaten me thoroughly, my uncle ordered me to take him to the railway track and show him the direction the train had gone in. I could barely stand. The ballast had injured my feet, and the beating had finished me off.

  ‘How am I supposed to look for him in the dark?’ Mekki cursed, leaving the shack.

  At dawn, Mekki wasn’t back. The widow came to ask for news every five minutes, in a state of mental collapse.

  Three days passed and still there was nothing on the horizon. After a week, we began to fe
ar the worst. My aunt was constantly on her knees, praying. My mother kept going round in circles in the one room that made up our house. ‘I suppose you’re proud of yourself,’ she grunted, resisting the impulse to hit me. ‘You see where your mischief has landed us? It’s all your fault. For all we know, the jackals have long since chewed your uncle’s bones. What will become of us without him?’

  Just when we were beginning to lose hope, we heard the widow cry out. It was about four in the afternoon. We ran out of the shack. Mekki could barely stand up, his face was dark, and he was covered in dirt. The widow was hugging her child tightly to her, pulling up his gaiters to see if he was hurt, feeling his scalp for any bumps or injuries; the boy showed the effects of wandering and hunger, but was safe and sound. He was staring at me dull-eyed, and pointing his finger at me the way you point at a culprit.

  2

  Ogres are nothing but hallucinations born of our superstitions, and an excuse for them, which is why we are no better than they are, because, as both false witnesses and stern judges, we often condemn before deliberating.

  The ogre known as Graba wasn’t as monstrous as all that.

  From the hill that served as my vantage point, I had seen its people as plague victims and its slums as deadly traps. I was wrong. Seen from close up, the ghetto was simply living as best it could. It might have seemed like purgatory, but it wasn’t. In Graba, people weren’t paying for their crimes or their sins, they were just poor, that was all.

  Driven by boredom and idleness, I started venturing further and further into the ghetto. I was just beginning to feel part of it when I had my baptism of fire. Which of course I’d been expecting.

  A carter offered me a douro to help him load about a hundred bundles of wood onto his cart. Once the job was done, he paid me half the promised sum, swearing on his children’s heads that it was all he had on him. He seemed sincere. I was watching him walk away when a voice behind me cried out, ‘Are you trying to muscle in on my territory?’

  It was the Daho brothers. They were barring my way.

  I sensed things were about to go downhill. Peerless street fighters, they reigned supreme over the local kids. Whenever a boy came running through the crowd, his face reduced to a pulp, it meant the Dahos weren’t far away. They were only twelve or thirteen, but talked through the sides of their mouths like old lags. Behind them, their bodyguards rubbed their hands at the prospect of a thrashing. The Daho brothers couldn’t just go on their way. Wherever they stopped, blood had to flow. It was the rule. Kings hate truces, and the twins didn’t believe in taking a well-earned rest. Squat and faun-like, their faces so identical you felt you were seeing the same disaster twice, they were as fast as whips and just as sharp. Adults nicknamed them Gog and Magog, two irredeemable little pests bound to end up on the scaffold as surely as ageing virgins were destined to marry their halfwit cousins. There was no getting away from them and I was angry with myself for having crossed their path.

  ‘I don’t want to fight,’ I said.

  This spontaneous surrender was greeted with sardonic laughter.

  ‘Hand over what you’ve got in your pocket.’

  I took out the coin the carter had given me and held it out. My hand was steady. I wasn’t looking for trouble. I wanted to get home in one piece.

  ‘You have to be nuts to be content with this,’ Daho One said, weighing my earnings contemptuously in his hand. ‘You don’t move a cartload of stuff for half a douro, you little toerag. Any idiot would have asked for three times this much.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said apologetically.

  ‘Turn out your pockets, now.’

  ‘I’ve already given you everything I have.’

  ‘Liar.’

  I could see in their eyes that confiscating my pay was just the start and that what mattered was the thrashing. I immediately went on the defensive, determined to give as good as I got. The Daho brothers always hit first, without warning, hoping to take their victim by surprise. They would strike simultaneously, in a perfectly synchronised movement, with a headbutt to the nose and a kick between the legs to disconcert their prey. The rest was just a formality.

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?’ a providential voice rang out. ‘A whole bunch of you picking on a little kid?’

  The voice belonged to a shopkeeper standing in the doorway of his establishment with his hands on his hips. His tarboosh was tilted at a rakish angle over one eye and his moustache was turned up at the ends. He moved his fat carcass to adjust his Turkish sirwal and, advancing into the sunlight, looked around at the gang before letting his keen eyes fall on the twins.

  ‘If you want to take him on, do it one at a time.’

  I’d been expecting the shopkeeper to come to my rescue, but all he was doing was organising my beating in a more conventional way, which wasn’t exactly a lucky break for me.

  Daho One accepted the challenge. Sneering, his eyes shining with wicked glee, he rolled up his sleeves.

  ‘Move back,’ the shopkeeper ordered the rest of the gang, ‘and don’t even think of joining in.’

  A wave of anticipation went through the gang as they formed a circle around us. Daho One’s snarl increased as he looked me up and down. He feinted to the left and tried to punch me but only brushed my temple. He didn’t get a second chance because my fist shot out in retaliation and, much to my surprise, hit its target. The scourge of the local kids flopped like a puppet and collapsed in the dust, his arms outstretched. The gang gasped in outraged amazement. The other twin stood there stunned for a few moments, unable to understand or admit what his eyes were telling him, then, in a rage, he ordered his brother to get up. But his brother didn’t get up. He was sleeping the sleep of the just.

  Sensing the turn things seemed to be taking, the shopkeeper came and stood beside me and we both looked at the gang picking up their martyr, who was deep in an impenetrable dream filled with bells and birdsong.

  ‘You didn’t play fair,’ cried a frizzy-haired little runt with legs like a wading bird. ‘You tricked him. You’ll pay for that.’

  ‘We’ll be back for you,’ Daho Two vowed, wiping his snotty nose with the back of his hand.

  The shopkeeper was a little disappointed by my rapid victory. He had been hoping for a more substantial show, full of falls and suspense and dodges and devastating punches, thus getting a decent slice of entertainment for free. Reluctantly he admitted to me that, all things considered, he was delighted that someone had succeeded in soundly thrashing that lowlife, who blighted the ghetto and thought he could get away with anything because there was nobody to take him on.

  ‘You’re really quick,’ he said, flatteringly. ‘Where did you learn to hit like that?’

  ‘That’s the first time I was ever in a fight, sir.’

  ‘Wow, such promise! How would you like to work for me? It isn’t difficult. All you have to do is keep guard when I’m not there and handle a few little things.’

  I took the bait without even asking about my wages, only too happy to be able to earn my crust and make a contribution to the family’s war chest.

  ‘When do I start, sir?’

  ‘Right away,’ he said, pointing reverently at his dilapidated shop.

  I had no way of knowing that when charitable people intervene to save your skin, they don’t necessarily plan to leave any of it on your back.

  The shopkeeper was called Zane, and it was he who taught me that the devil had a name.

  What Zane referred to as little things were more like the labours of Hercules. No sooner had I finished one task than I was given another. I wasn’t allowed a lunch break or even a moment to catch my breath. I was told to tidy the shambles that was the premises (a veritable Ali Baba’s cave), stack the shelves, polish the bric-a-brac, dislodge the spiders, a bucket of water in one hand and a ceiling brush in the other, and deal with deliveries. Before giving me a trial, Zane subjected me to ‘loyalty’ tests, leaving money and other bait lying around to see how hon
est I was; I didn’t touch a thing.

  Within a few months, I learnt more about human nature than an old soldier. Zane was like a first-class school, and the people he came into contact with provided wonderful lessons in life. The most curious characters would creep into his shop, some with suspect packages, others with futile projects. Zane – smuggler, blackmailer, fence, snitch and pimp – controlled his circle with an iron fist, and he had a finger in every pie; there wasn’t a single deal, even the most insignificant, carried out in Graba that he didn’t get a cut from. He would buy for next to nothing and sell at exorbitant prices, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Everyone in Graba owed him something. People would go down on their knees to him, prepared to do any dirty work to merit his generosity. Zane had no qualms. For a can of food or a trifling bit of credit, he would ask for the moon. He shamelessly exploited every opportunity and took every advantage he could of people’s misfortunes. He was a pawnbroker too. When the item was something of value, a decent piece of jewellery for example, he would make the excuse that he didn’t have enough money available and ask the customer to come back the following day, which gave him time to arrange a trap. The next day, the customer would reappear, deposit his jewel, count his money and leave … only to come back ten minutes later, his face covered in blood and his clothes torn to shreds as if he’d just been in a fight with a bear. ‘I was attacked and robbed not far from here.’ To which Zane would reply imperturbably, ‘What’s that to me? Am I supposed to give my customers an escort to make sure they get home safely?’ And with this he would dismiss the poor devil. It was perfectly obvious that the ambush had been set up by my employer. He had henchmen who just waited for a sign from him to pounce. Zane wasn’t content with these practices, which weren’t all that unusual; he also boasted of having policemen under his thumb and claimed he could have anyone sent to jail just by clicking his fingers. He was widely feared and nobody haggled with him. Often, humble women draped from head to foot in filthy veils, with just a tiny opening at the front to see where they were going, would come into the shop. They were usually at the end of their tether and were prepared to make any sacrifice for a piece of sugar or a small coin. Zane would push them into the back room, pin them up against a big table cluttered with all kinds of implements, pull their dresses up over their naked buttocks and possess them unceremoniously. He loved humiliating them and making them suffer before throwing them out like dishcloths. I think he was mad. You had to be mad to put down roots in Graba when you could afford a house in the city; you had to be completely demented to flaunt your fortune in front of people so broke they’d think a bit of spittle was cash; and you had to be suicidal to rape mothers, sisters and aunts, one after the other, when you knew that in that deadly place no secret could be kept for very long, public condemnation was swift, and a knife was as sharp as it was accurate. Zane didn’t give a hoot, convinced he could cross a minefield with his eyes closed. He carried with him amulets stronger than spells and curses combined. He had been born under a cast-iron star and feared neither gods nor men.