The Orange Grove (10 page)

“I didn't want to hurt you.”

“But you did.”

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“Don't apologize. It's good that something can happen in life to shake us up and show us our own triviality.”

“I like your text.”

“Thank you, but it's still unfinished. And that's not what interests me, anyway, to know whether you like my text or not. That's not the question.”

“You're angry, sir.”

“Yes, I am!”

Aziz rose and made his way slowly to the exit. Mikaël did nothing to stop him.

SONY

Aziz didn't attend any more rehearsals, nor did he return phone calls from Mikaël and his friends. It was a serious offense. He was putting his training in danger and risking expulsion from the school. Two days before the opening, Mikaël had no choice but to give Aziz's lines to three different students so they wouldn't have too much to memorize in such a short time. In the final scene, the mercenary would no longer address Sony, now absent from the stage, but rather would speak directly to the public. In that way, every member of the audience would become the child. Mikaël was not happy with this solution. It didn't allow him to present a clear idea of the mercenary's decision: kill the child or let him live? The answer would hover in the minds of the spectators in abstract
fashion. But Mikaël could do no better in his present state of agitation.

Aziz's absence had affected the morale of the group. The changes to the staging had unsettled the performances of some. Mikaël tried as best he could to remain calm, to not show his apprehension, to be encouraging. But he was shaken. He'd behaved badly with Aziz. In the end, he had no concrete idea of what Aziz had lived through in his country, of the torment that ate away at him when he imagined his brother's last moments. Had the boy understood what was being asked of him? Had he taken the measure of his act's barbarity? Had he been manipulated to the very last moment? Forced to perform the unthinkable? These unanswered questions robbed his text of all its pertinence, highlighting his own helplessness. His apprehension was enormous. His sadness, even more so.

One hour before the start of the play, to his astonishment, his nervousness suddenly disappeared. Perhaps he'd anesthetized himself without knowing it, to protect himself from his growing fears? And so he sat in the
audience instead of in the control room as he had intended.

The show began a few minutes late, but everything went rather well for a first night. Yet he couldn't bring himself to concentrate on what he was seeing and hearing. It was as if his own text made him uneasy and ashamed. He tried to take mental notes of the performances for the actors, to give to them after the curtain call. He hadn't forgotten that this was also a pedagogical exercise. But as the evening moved on, he lost the thread of the show, his concentration came and went, and he found himself thinking of Aziz's brother. He imagined a little nine-year-old boy with a belt of explosives around his waist, hidden under his shirt. He saw him in the midst of other children who were also watching a show—not a war story like this one, but a story that was simply making them happy. He heard their laughter. Aziz's uncle had spoken of a puppet show. He'd like to know whether the little boy weighed down by explosives had, for an instant, forgotten his hand on the detonator, captivated by the puppets' behavior. To know, finally, whether the
tragic destinies of Aziz and his brother might have been avoided.

As the play neared its end, Mikaël stopped paying attention to what was happening onstage, as if he were trying to escape his own text. But then the stunned silence of the actors pulled him out of his inner world. As if by magic, Aziz had appeared. He was standing stage right, wearing his winter coat, his red scarf around his neck. He had just come in from outside, you could still see a bit of snow melting on his shoulders. Mikaël sensed that the audience around him was confused. Clearly, the spectators were wondering whether or not the young man's entrance was part of the show. He stood out, dressed as he was, in that desert decor. The sand, in the course of the action, had been completely swept away. Now the entire floor was just a sheet of light, making the actors seem poetic or spectral, depending on their position. After a moment of hesitation, the play resumed, but nothing was the same. A sense of solemnity had descended on the hall, casting its ill-defined spell over both actors and spectators.

Aziz took a step.

“Listen to me, soldier. My name is Sony. I'm seven years old.”

That was how he spoke to the actor who played his parents' assassin. He took another step.

“Listen to me, soldier. My name is Aziz. I'm nine years old.”

He took another step.

“Listen to me, soldier. My name is Amed, I'm twenty years old. In my head there are other names and other ages, many others. He who is talking to you is never alone. He carries a little country around in his head. You've just killed my parents. You sliced my father's hands off with your big jagged knife. Then you slashed his throat. And shot him down. Your action was very precise. Wonderful. You must have had many occasions to practice this action to lend it such elegance. And you lost none of your deftness and concentration when you shot down my mother with your brand-new, beautiful machine gun. Who gave it to you? Was it a present? How you seem to love it and care for it! But your clothes are dirty and torn. Your hair is grey with dust and your hands red with blood.
Your shoulders slump and your gaze is cracked like a pebble. I'm amazed that you can ask me to tell you a story. I'm young, and in your eyes, I'm only a child. Do you need to hear a story told by a child? Maybe you don't see a child when you look at me? Or perhaps you only see your own? Because you, too, have a son. A son who looks like me. Who looks like us. Who looks like my brother.”

Aziz advanced to the center of the stage. The light from the floor elongated his silhouette. He resembled a flame, ramrod straight, drawn up toward the sky. He spoke to the audience.

“How old are you? What is your name? You have the name of a father and the age of a father. But you have many other names and many other ages. I could talk to you as if you were my brother. Instead of the machine gun your hands are gripping so fiercely, you could be wearing around your waist a heavy belt of explosives. Your hand would be on the detonator and your heart would be on mine. And you would ask me to tell you a story so as not to fall asleep and let your hand, by accident, press the detonator. And I would talk
to you until the end of time, that end which is sometimes so near.”

Aziz took off his long scarf, then his coat. Mikaël felt as if he alone was watching Aziz, but he knew that every member of the audience was feeling the same way.

“Listen to me, soldier, even in the painful situation in which I find myself, I can still think. You tell me that you'll let me live if I give you a valid reason to spare me. If I capture your attention with a story that will free you from your hatred. I don't believe you. You don't need me to tell you a story. And you certainly don't need a reason to not shoot me down like a dog. You want to know what I'm doing now, by talking to you as if I were talking to a friend? I am mourning my father, I am mourning my mother and also all my brothers. There are thousands of them.”

Amed took one more step toward the public.

“No, you don't need to have a reason or even to have right on your side to do what you think you must do. Don't look elsewhere for what is already within you. Who am I to think in your
place? My clothes are dirty and torn, and my heart is shattered like a pebble. I cry tears that tear at my face. But as you can hear, my voice is calm. Better still, I have a peaceful voice. I am speaking to you with peace in my words. I am speaking to you in a voice that is seven years old, nine years old, twenty years old, a thousand years old. Do you hear me?”

Larry Tremblay is a writer, director, actor, and Kathakali specialist. He is the author of thirty books, including two previous novels,
The Bicycle Eater
and
The Obese Christ
; one short story collection,
Piercing
; and numerous volumes of poetry. A three-time finalist for the Governor General's Award, and a finalist for numerous other international prizes, he is also the author of more than twenty plays, including
The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi, The Ventriloquist
, and
War Cantata
, which have been translated and produced in more than a dozen languages. Tremblay lives in Montreal. Credit: BERNARD PRÉFONTAINE

Sheila Fischman has translated more than 150 Quebecois novels from French to English, including works by Anne Hébert, Gaétan Soucy, Jacques Poulin, André Major, Élise Turcotte, and Michel Tremblay. She has received awards for her translations and for her life's work, including the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation, the Columbia University Translation Center Award (twice), and, most recently, the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize. She lives in Montreal.