The First Man

  "No," said Jacques, "the other Arabs yes, the bandits no."

  "Right, I said to your mother the bosses too tough. It's crazy but bandits too much."

  "That's it," said Jacques. "But we have to do something for Pierrot."

  "Good, I'll tell Daniel."

  "And Donat?" (That was the man at the gasworks who boxed.)

  "He's dead. Cancer. We're all old."

  Yes, Donat was dead. And Aunt Marguerite, his mother's sister, was dead; that was where his grandmother would drag him on Sunday afternoons, and he was horribly bored, except when Uncle Michel, a teamster—who was also bored by these conversations in the dark dining room, over bowls of black coffee on the oilcloth table covering—would take him to his nearby stable, and there, in the shadowy light, while the afternoon sun was still warming the streets outside, first Jacques would smell the good smell of horsehair, of

  straw and manure, hear the harness chains rattle against the wooden manger, the horses turning their long-lashed eyes to him, and Uncle Michel, tall and spare with a long moustache, who himself smelled of straw, would lift him onto one of the horses that would placidly plunge his nose back into the manger and crunch his oats, while his uncle gave the child some carobs, which he chewed and sucked with delight, full of friendship for this uncle who in his mind was always associated with horses, and it was with him that they went with the whole family on Easter Monday for a mouna treat to the Sidi-Ferruch forest, and Michel rented one of those horse-drawn trams that ran between the district where they lived and downtown Algiers, a big sort of latticework cage equipped with back-to-back benches, to which the horses were harnessed, the lead horse chosen by Michel from his stable, and early in the morning they loaded the tram with big laundry baskets filled with the coarse brioches called "mounas" and the light crumbly pastries called "oreil-lettes" that all the women of the house made at Aunt Marguerite's over the two days before the outing, flattening out the dough with a rolling pin on the oilcloth dusted with flour till it covered almost the entire cloth, then, with a small boxwood cutter, cutting out the pastries that the children would carry on plates to be dropped into big copper basins full of boiling oil, then to be carefully set in rows in the big laundry baskets, from which would come the exquisite odor of vanilla that accompanied them all the way to Sidi-Ferruch, mingling with the smell of the surf that rose from the

  sea to the shore road, vigorously inhaled by the four horses over which Michela would crack his whip, which he handed occasionally to Jacques beside him. Jacques was fascinated by the four enormous rumps rocking before him with a great noise of bells or else opening as the tail went up and he would see the savory dung form then drop to the ground while the horseshoes sparked and the bells rang faster as the horses tossed their heads. In the forest, while the others settled the baskets and dishtowels under the trees, Jacques helped Michel rub down the horses and fasten around their necks the gray-brown canvas nose bags, in which the horses chomped their jaws, opening and closing their large brotherly eyes or chasing away a fly with an impatient hoof. The forest was full of people; they ate side by side while here and there people were dancing to the sound of an accordion or a guitar, and the sea was rumbling nearby—it was never hot enough to swim, but always enough to go barefoot in the shallowest waves—while others were taking their siesta, and the imperceptible softening of the light made the reaches of the sky still more vast, so vast that the child felt tears coming to his eyes along with a great cry of joy and gratitude for this wonderful life. But Aunt Marguerite was dead, she was so beautiful, and always stylish—too coquettish, people said—but she had not been wrong, for diabetes would soon nail her to her armchair, and she would begin to swell up in that neglected apartment

  a. bring Michel back during the Orleansville earthquake.

  until she was so enormous, so bloated she could hardly breathe, so ugly it was frightening, and around her were her daughters and her lame son who was a cobbler, all watching sick at heart to see whether her breath would fail her.a b She grew fatter still, stuffed with insulin, and at the end her breath did give out.c

  But Aunt Jeanne was dead too, the grandmother's sister, the one who attended the Sunday afternoon concerts and who held out for a long time in her whitewashed farmhouse with her three war-widowed daughters, always talking about her husband, who had died long since.d Uncle Joseph, who only spoke the Mahon dialect and whom Jacques admired for the white hair topping his handsome pink face and the black sombrero he wore, even at the dinner table, with an inimitably noble air, a real peasant patriarch, who nonetheless would occasionally lift himself slightly during the meal to let loose an incongruous sound, for which he would courteously excuse himself in response to his wife's resigned reproaches. And his grandmother's neighbors, the Massons, they were all dead, the old woman first and then the older sister, the tall Alexandra and [ ]1 the

  a. Book six in the second part.

  b. And Francis was dead too (see latest notes)

  c. Denise leaves home at eighteen to be a prostitute—Comes back rich at twenty-one, sells her jewels, does over her father's whole stable—killed by an epidemic

  d. the daughters? 1. Illegible name.

  brother with the ears that stuck out, who was a contortionist and sang at the matinees at the Alcazar movie house. All of them, yes, even the youngest daughter, Marthe, whom his brother Henri had courted and more than courted.

  No one never ever talked about them. Neither his mother nor his uncle ever spoke of the departed relatives. Nor of the father whose traces he was seeking, nor of the others. They went on living in poverty, though they were no longer in need, but they were set in their ways, and they looked on life with a resigned suspicion; they loved it as animals do, but they knew from experience that it would regularly give birth to disaster without even showing any sign that it was carrying it.a And then, the way these two were with him, silent and drawn in on themselves, empty of memories and only holding on to a few blurred images; they lived now in proximity to death—that is always in the present. Never would he learn from them who his father had been, and even though by their presence alone they reopened springs within him reaching back to his poor and happy childhood, he could not be sure whether these very rich memories gushing out of him were really faithful to the child he had been. It was far more certain, on the contrary, that he was left with two or three favorite pictures that joined him to them, made him one with them, that blotted out what he had tried to be for so many years

  a. but are they after all aliens? (no, he was the a.)

  and reduced him to the blind anonymous being that for so many years had survived through his family and that made him truly distinctive.

  The picture, for example, of those hot evenings when after dinner the whole family would take chairs down to the sidewalk in front of the door to the building, where the air coming down from the dust-covered ficus trees was hot and dusty, while the people of the neighborhood came and went in front of them, and Jacques,a with his head on his mother's thin shoulder, leaning back a little in his chair, would gaze up through the branches at the stars of the summer sky; or that other picture of the Christmas night when, coming home from Aunt Marguerite's after midnight without Ernest, they saw a man lying in front of the restaurant near their door, with another man dancing around him. The two men had been drinking and had wanted to drink some more. The owner, a frail young blond man, had told them to leave. They had kicked his pregnant wife. And the owner fired a shot. The bullet lodged in the man's right temple. Now on the sidewalk that head was resting on the wound. Drunk on alcohol and fright, the other man had started dancing around him, and while the restaurant closed up, everyone fled before the police arrived. And in that out-of-the-way corner of the neighborhood where they stood squeezed together, the two women holding the children tight against them, a rare beam of light gleaming on the street slick with re-

  a. humble and proud sovereign of the beauty of the night.

  cent rainfall, the lon
g wet tracks of cars, the occasional arrival of the noisy brightly lit trolleys full of joyous travelers indifferent to this scene from another world— all this engraved on Jacques's terrified heart an image that until now had survived all others: the sweet and persistent image of the neighborhood where he reigned all day long, innocent and eager, but which the ending of the days would turn suddenly mysterious and disturbing, when the streets would begin to be peopled with shadows—or rather, a single anonymous shadow would sometimes emerge, accompanied by soft footsteps and the indistinct sound of voices, and be bathed in the blood-red splendor a pharmacy's globe light, and the child would be suddenly filled with dread and would run to his wretched home to be back among his own.

  6A : School1

  aThis man had never known his father, but he often spoke to Jacques of him in a rather mythological way, and in any case at a critical time he knew how to take the father's role. That is why Jacques had never forgotten him, as if, having never really felt the lack of a father he had never known, he had nonetheless subconsciously recognized, first as a child, then during the rest of his life, the one paternal act—both well thought out and crucial—that had affected his life as a child. For M. Bernard, his teacher for the year of the certificat d'etudes,2 had at a given moment used all his weight as a man to change the destiny of this child in his charge, and he had in fact changed it.

  Right now M. Bernard was facing Jacques in his small

  1. See appendix, sheet II, pp. 286—87, that the author inserted between pages 68 and 69 of the manuscript.

  a. Transition from 6?

  2. The last year of elementary school, and at the time the last year of compulsory public education—Trans.

  apartment in the winding streets of the Rovigo, almost at the foot of the Casbah, a district that overlooked the city and the sea, occupied by small shopkeepers of all races and all religions, where the homes smelled at once of spices and of poverty. He was there, grown old, his hair more sparse, old-age splotches under the now glassy tissue of his cheeks and hands, moving more slowly than in the old days, and visibly glad when he could sit back down in his rattan armchair, by the window that faced the street of shops, where a canary was chirping; age had also softened him and he let his feelings show, which he had not done before, but he was still erect, his voice strong and firm, as it had been back when, standing before his class, he would say: "In line two by two. By two! I didn't say by five!" And the scrambling would stop; the pupils, who both feared and adored M. Bernard, would line up along the wall outside the classroom, in the second-floor corridor, until, when the rows were at last still and straight, and the children quiet, a "Come in now, you bunch of tramousses " would liberate them and give them the signal to move but at a more subdued pace, which M. Bernard, robust, elegantly dressed, his strong face with its regular features crowned by hair that was thinning but still smooth, smelling of cologne, would watch over with good-natured strictness.

  The school was located in a relatively new part of that old neighborhood, among two- and three-story houses built not long after the war of 1870 and more recent warehouses that eventually connected the main street of the neighborhood, where Jacques's home was, to the inner harbor and the coaling docks. So Jacques

  went on foot twice a day to that building he had begun attending at the age of four, when he went to nursery school, about which he remembered nothing except a dark stone lavatory that took up one whole end of the covered playground where he landed one day headfirst, got up all bloody with a cut eyebrow, amidst the panic of teachers, and it was then he became acquainted with medical staples and, in fact, his had hardly been removed when they had to put one on his other eyebrow, his brother having conceived the idea of dressing him up at home in an old bowler that blinded him and an old coat that hobbled his feet, with the result that he wound up with his head hitting a loose tile and was covered with blood once again. But now he was going to nursery school with Pierre, who was a year or almost so older, who lived in a nearby street with his mother, also a war widow and now working in the post office, and two of his uncles who worked on the railroad. Their families were vaguely friends, or—the way people are in these neighborhoods—they valued one another but hardly ever exchanged visits, and they were firmly resolved to help each other out but almost never had the occasion to do so. Only the children had really become friends, from that first day when Jacques was still wearing a dress and was entrusted to Pierre, who was aware that he was wearing pants and had responsibilities as the older boy, the two children went together to nursery school. They then went through every grade together up to the year of the certificat d'etudes, which Jacques entered at the age of nine. For five years they made the same journey four times a day, one blond, the other

  brown-haired, one placid, the other hot-blooded, destined from the beginning to be friends, good students both and also tireless at play. Jacques shone more in some subjects, but his conduct, his flightiness, and his desire to show off were forever leading him into all sorts of foolish behavior, and this gave the advantage back to the more sober and discreet Pierre. So they alternated at the head of the class, but, in contrast to their families, they did not think to take pride in this. Their pleasures were different. Each morning, Jacques would wait for Pierre outside his house. They would leave before the passage of the scavengers—or more precisely a cart drawn by a broken-kneed horse driven by an old Arab. The sidewalk was still moist from the humidity of the night, the air coming from the sea tasted of salt. Pierre's street, which led to the market, was dotted with garbage cans that famished Arabs or Moors, or sometimes an old Spanish tramp, had pried open at dawn to see if there was still something to be retrieved from what poor and thrifty families had so disdained they would throw it away. The lids of these cans were usually off, and by this hour of the morning the neighborhood's thin vigorous cats had taken the place of the ragged people. The idea was for the two children to creep up to the garbage can so noiselessly that they could suddenly slap the lid down on the cat inside. This exploit was not easy, for cats born and raised in a poor district were as vigilant and agile as animals used to fighting for their right to live. But sometimes, hypnotized by an appetizing find that was hard to extract from the pile of garbage, a cat would let itself be caught unawares. The lid would slam

  noisily down, the cat would give a terrified howl, convulsively arch its back and claws, and manage to raise the roof of its zinc prison, then scramble out, its hair standing on end with fear, and tear off as if there were a pack of hounds at its heels—to bursts of laughter from its tormentors, who were hardly aware of their cruelty.a To tell the truth, these tormentors were also inconsistent, for they directed their hatred at the dogcatcher, nicknamed "Galoufa"1 (which in Spanish . . .) by the neighborhood children. This municipal employee operated at about this same time of day, but if necessary he would also come around in the afternoon. He was an Arab in European dress who was usually stationed at the rear of a strange cart drawn by two horses and driven by an impassive old Arab. The body of this cart consisted of a kind of cube made of wood, with a double row of cages with strong bars installed along each side. It included a total of sixteen cages that could each hold a dog, that would then find itself squeezed between the bars and the back of the cage. Since the dogcatcher was perched on a little running board at the back of the cart, his nose was even with the roof of the cages and thus he would survey his hunting grounds. The cart rolled slowly through wet streets that were beginning to be peopled by children on their way to school, housewives in flannelette housecoats decorated with garish flowers

  a. Exoticism pea soup.

  1. The name originated with the first person to take this position and who was in fact named Galoufa.

  going for their bread or milk, and Arab peddlers returning to the market, their little folded stands over one shoulder, holding in the other hand enormous hampers of braided straw that contained their merchandise. And suddenly, at a word from the dogcatcher, the old Arab would pul
l back on the reins and the cart would stop. The dogcatcher had spotted one of his wretched victims digging feverishly in a garbage can, glancing back frantically at regular intervals, or else trotting rapidly along a wall with the hurried and anxious look of an undernourished dog. Galoufa then seized from the top of the cart a leather rod with a chain that ran through a ring down the handle. He moved toward the animal at the supple, rapid, and silent pace of a trapper, and when he had caught up with the beast, if it was not wearing the collar that proves membership in a good family, he would run at it, in a sudden burst of astonishing speed, and put his weapon around the dog's neck, so that it served as an iron and leather lasso. Suddenly strangled, the animal struggled wildly while making inarticulate groans. But the man quickly dragged [it] to the cart, opened one of the cage doors, lifted the dog, strangling it more and more, and shoved it into the cage, making sure to put the handle of his lasso through the bars. Once the dog was captured, he loosened the iron chain and freed the neck of the now imprisoned animal. At least that is how things happened when the dog was not under the protection of the neighborhood children. For they were all in league against Galoufa. They knew the captured dogs were taken to the municipal pound, kept for three days, after which, if no one claimed them, the

  animals were put to death. And if they had not known it, the pitiful spectacle of that death cart returning after a fruitful journey, loaded with wretched animals of all colors and sizes, terrified behind their bars and leaving behind the vehicle a trail of cries and mortal howls, would have been enough to rouse the children's indignation. So, as soon as the prison van appeared in the area, the children would alert each other. They would scatter throughout the streets of the neighborhood, they too hunting down the dogs, but in order to chase them off to other parts of the city, far from the terrible lasso. If despite these precautions the dogcatcher found a stray dog in their presence, as happened several times to Pierre and Jacques, their tactics were always the same. Before the dogcatcher could get close enough to his quarry, Jacques and Pierre would start screaming "Galoufa! Galoufa!" in voices so piercing and so terrifying that the dog would flee as fast as he could and would soon be out of reach. Now it was the children's turn to prove their skill as sprinters, for the unfortunate Galoufa, who was paid a bounty for each dog he caught, was wild with anger, and he would chase them brandishing his leather rod. The grown-ups usually helped them escape, either by hindering Galoufa or by stopping him outright and telling him to stick to his dogs. The workingmen of the neighborhood were all hunters and as a rule liked dogs; they had no respect for this strange occupation. As Uncle Ernest would say: "He loafer!" The old Arab who drove the cart presided silent and impassive over all the fuss, or, if the arguments stretched out, would calmly start rolling a cigarette.