Two Testaments (14 page)

On the warped wooden desk piled high with documents, he found a file labeled
US Aid
. From it he pulled out a list of material supplied by the United States to the FLN during the years of the war.

It had not been free aid, humanitarian though it might have seemed. Oh no. The US wasn’t stupid. They were bargaining for oil when Algeria was finally independent. Oil! And he had instructions from the top of the FLN to continue clandestine negotiations. He laughed. It was perfect! Ironic and perfect. He read the names of the men he could call on in the States. Five names. He took a pencil and circled the third one. M. Roger Hoffmann, former ambassador to Algeria, residing now in Washington, DC.

“Come for a visit, M. Roger Hoffmann. See what surprises await you. Then your son’s punishment will be complete. And after he has known, as I have, the agony of losing a father, I will be finished with him, too.”

David grew more and more impatient. Didn’t Moustafa want to be out of here? The waits were growing longer by the day as more and more pied-noirs, convinced of their fate, packed their belongings and headed to the port.

“You aren’t going to leave, are you?” David asked him point-blank, as they sat in the kitchen sipping mint tea and watching the paint flaking from the ceiling.

“I’m glad you stayed, David,” Moustafa answered cautiously. “But I don’t expect you to understand. My people have no one. You saw the French officer at the port, the one who turned the boy away. He does not care that we fought alongside him to keep Algeria French. It’s our problem how we will survive in this country when the army leaves. They have enough problems of their own.” His eyes grew dark and somber. “I tell you, one day France will regret our pain.”

“And do all the officers feel the same way?”

“No, not all. Many treat us like brothers. They weep, they try to help. But this is a political war, and we are only a tiny minority. You cannot understand.”

“But I want to understand. Then I’ll know how to help.”

Moustafa cursed, staring at David with bitterness that seemed to seep out of his soul. “Perhaps if your skin were black, you would understand. But you are a wealthy white American. Your life has not been touched by political squabbles. It’s not your fault. It’s just what makes it impossible for you to know.”

David stood. “I’m an American, a rich American,” he said, hovering above Moustafa, feeling the power the Arab accorded him. Then he sat back down at the table and said, “I am also a Jew.”

Moustafa gathered the coffee cups, rose, and went to the sink. With his back turned to David, he muttered, “So?”

“So …” David repeated, “so I understand. Did Anne-Marie never tell you my story, Moustafa? You do not know that I survived the camps as a boy? The only child in my camp to survive? That I watched my mother and sister die? Don’t judge me too quickly, Moustafa Dramchini.”

Neither spoke for a moment.

“Do you have a cigarette?” David asked.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t. Not usually at least.”

Moustafa pulled one from the drawer in the kitchen cabinet and offered it to David, who took a match from a box by the stove.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” David said. “It’s more complicated than simply wanting to get you back to Anne-Marie.” He inhaled deeply, then let the smoke escape in a long curl from his lips. “When I saw what shape she was in, it reminded me of my mother in the death camp. I was furious with myself that I had not realized the full extent of her pain.”

“How could you know? She didn’t want you to know.”

“I was playing at war. She was living it. You are living it.” He watched the smoke float before him like a hazy memory. “I lived through a war a long time ago, and I am only now beginning to accept it. I shut it out because I was helpless to do anything else. The pain of doing nothing would have destroyed me.”

Moustafa watched him with a sort of fascinated gaze. He didn’t try to interrupt.

“Now, strange as it sounds, I’m learning to accept the past. To forgive.” He laughed loudly. “What a crazy word! It was Gabby’s idea. Gabriella—my friend.”

Moustafa nodded.

“To forgive and to trust again. To trust not only myself, but others.” He flicked the butt of the cigarette into the cheap white ashtray Moustafa had placed on the table. “I stayed here because I want Anne-Marie to be happy with you. I want to make that one thing right. And I stayed to prove to myself that I could fight, not out of hatred or revenge, but out of love. Do you understand, Moustafa? Does that make sense to you?”

“Perhaps I judged too quickly,” Moustafa replied. “But this forgiveness, this love. I don’t know what you mean. It is something bigger than what you feel for a woman,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“Yes, bigger. It’s a love as big as God Himself. That is why I stayed, and it scares the— It scares me. Because maybe I don’t have the guts to do what it wants me to do.”

“You’re a strange man, David Hoffmann. Someday, I may call you my friend.”

David crushed out the cigarette and nodded. “So be it then,” he said. He reached his hand over to Moustafa, who clasped it. “So be it.”

It hurt to think of Gabriella. Just saying her name out loud to Moustafa had brought back the feeling he got when he was with her. That heady excitement, that quickening wit from being with a woman who could read him. A woman who loved him. A woman whom he loved.

David picked up a pen. “How safe is it to send mail from here?” he asked.

Moustafa was sprawled on a mattress a few feet away. “Safe enough if you go through my friends. You want to send a letter to your girl?”

“You guessed it.”

“Write her then. Tomorrow I’ll take it to my friend. I have a letter of my own to send.” Moustafa held up a piece of paper and laughed a bit sheepishly. “Great minds think alike.”

“You got that right.” David rolled back over on his mattress and began to write.

Dear Gabby,

My girl! How I miss you! How confused I feel in this mad country. Did you understand why I stayed? Did you see I had to? I’m redeeming the time of my past. I’m buying it back so that I can have a future. So that we can have a future, free from bitterness.

I put a heavy load on you, and I hope, I pray that you are managing without me. You should teach Victor Hugo; it would help Jean-Louis. You were born to teach, my Gabby.

He chewed on the end of his pen, reflecting; then quickly he wrote about the events of the past weeks. He mentioned Anne-Marie only briefly. He did not want to spoil the letter for Gabby by trying to explain emotions that could not be explained.

This is a hellhole. Murders have become almost mundane. It’s hard to believe a good God could allow such brutality. It makes me wonder, question. It makes me angry. But somehow, too, I see this God of yours (of ours!) in the working out of each day. I can’t explain it. But then, you have already understood, n’est-ce pas?

The poppies must be all over the place by now. Pick one for me, my beautiful redhead. I am seeing you in my dreams.

Please give Ophélie a big hug for me. Tell her that I love her, that I miss her very much.

Keep praying for our safety. And always remember I love you.

David

Why had he stayed? Everything that mattered in his life was on the other side of the sea. He wondered if he could slip out of the apartment and get on a ferry for France tonight.

Then he looked at Ophélie’s picture of the ponies hanging on the wall in front of him. If he left, in his heart he knew that the last pony would never catch up with the others. He glanced over at Moustafa, who was still writing, and realized how much he cared about the man.

Moustafa was not a handsome man. He often looked a little disheveled with his curly, unkempt hair. But he was sturdy, loyal, observant.

A door creaked. Hussein slipped into the apartment, mumbling “
Bonsoir
” as he passed the bedroom. David glanced at his watch. The boy had been out late for the first time since they had met him. Where he dared go after curfew, David could not guess. If he was to get out of Algeria alive, this harki kid had better be careful.

David felt no loyalty to the child. Not yet. But perhaps it would come and surprise him, as it had tonight with Moustafa. This was war, and the strangest things happened in war.

9

Mother Griolet worked in slow motion these days. Just putting on her nun’s habit was exhausting. Her old heart was slowing down.

She stood in the middle of her office and looked around at the crowded walls. Children’s faces smiled back at her from worn photographs in simple frames. Most of the orphans had been placed in families. Many had grown up, married, and now had children of their own.

One picture caught her attention: M. and Mme Cohen with their three children. The parents had been taken to a concentration camp, the children found hiding in a false door behind a huge armoire. They were brought to the orphanage and hidden for months until one day their parents, emaciated but free, stumbled upon St. Joseph to claim them. With thankful hearts, they had started over again.

Now M. Cohen was a wealthy merchant in Geneva. He wrote Mother Griolet often.
Come visit us. The Swiss mountains will do you good.

She fingered several worn volumes on the shelves that were stacked sometimes two deep. Here and there, another photograph or trinket sat in front of the books. She reached for a foot-high replica of an old woman with a bundle of branches on her back. Mother Griolet lifted the clay
santon
, its floral dress and cloak made from real Provençal material, off the shelf. She recalled the frightened Jewish children who had come to the orphanage in the night, left on her doorstep with nothing but the santon in their possession. The older child, a girl of eight or nine, had whispered, “It is a gift from our parents for keeping us. Please take it. It is very important.”

The parents never returned, and the clay figurine had come to symbolize to Mother Griolet the whole of her mission in life. Giving. Giving what you have for the Master to do with as He wishes. The children had given their only possession. In turn, Mother Griolet had given all she could—protection. The children had survived, grown, prospered.

She set the santon on her mahogany desk, beside another letter from an irate parent threatening to discontinue his support of the Franco-American exchange program. How quickly rumors spread! The stooped clay woman seemed to peruse the letter, but her serene expression did not alter.

Mother Griolet pulled another letter from a stack of papers, this one from her superiors in the church demanding that she immediately do something to reduce the overcrowding at St. Joseph. She exhaled.
Lack of appropriate space for the proper development of the orphaned children
, they said, but Mother Griolet read between the lines. The townsfolk of Castelnau did not want these pied-noir and harki orphans. They had protested to the higher authorities.

“I protest too, to a different Higher Authority,” Mother Griolet said aloud. “Don’t let them take the children away,
mon Dieu
. Always You have provided in the past. Just what we needed. I am too old and weak to fight, but You are the One who changes hearts. Change the hearts of those dear souls in Castelnau. Change their hearts.”

She replaced the santon on the shelf and sank into the thick black-cushioned chair, suddenly feeling very old.

A light tapping on the door brought Mother Griolet out of her sleep. She sat up, flustered with herself for having nodded off. “Come in,” she said.

Anne-Marie Duchemin walked into the office, looking remarkably changed since the last time Mother Griolet had seen her. “Excuse me for interrupting you, Mother Griolet,” she began. Her voice was barely a whisper, soft and velvet. “I can come back if this is not a good time.”

“No, no, my child. Come in and have a seat. This is a fine time.”

The young woman stumbled through a request to help with the orphans, her face relaxing as Mother Griolet assured her that she could find work for her and that she and Ophélie could stay at St. Joseph for as long as they wished.