Two Testaments (6 page)

Hussein swallowed hard. He knew he should simply agree, but the question tumbled out, unchecked. “But how? How will I get there?”

Ali shoved him hard against the cement-brick wall. His breath reeked of cigarettes. “You will go to the docks tomorrow, and you will wait with all the pied-noirs every day until you find that Duchemin woman, and when you do, you will snivel and cry until her heart breaks for you. You’ll go to France with her, to that orphanage, and you’ll be the devil incarnate for them.” He laughed wickedly as Hussein’s eyes grew wide. “I’ll have everything ready for you tomorrow night,” he whispered. “Everything you need.”

Hussein felt a tightening in his stomach. It was impossible, what Ali was asking. Crazy! There was no guarantee that Anne-Marie Duchemin was leaving Algeria. But it didn’t matter, he realized. Ali had decided, and he had no choice but to kiss his mother quickly, as if he were simply leaving for the afternoon as he so often did. Then he would disappear, on a ferry to France with a suitcase full of weapons.

He felt his childhood slipping away. So it was not to be. He was not to know the peace of a free Algeria. His was another role. A hired assassin for Ali. Many other boys his age prided themselves on the number of pied-noirs they had killed. Now he would join them. He had no choice.

The news of the disastrous results on March 26 crushed the already dampened spirits of the pied-noirs in the quarantined district of Bab el-Oued. The casualty report that swept through the neighborhood listed eighty demonstrators dead and at least two hundred wounded. It seemed to many pied-noirs that not only had President de Gaulle betrayed them, but now the French army itself was no longer neutral. They too would kill pied-noirs, citizens of their own country. The gruesome events of the last week had proved it true.

Like everyone else, David was anxious for the quarantine to be lifted. Two more days and he would take Anne-Marie to the port and escape to France. Escape was the right word, he thought. Escape by the skin of their teeth. He had almost forgotten how much he feared war. Danger, adventure, these he could handle. But war, with its terrorism, torture, and hundreds of innocent victims, left a sickening taste in his mouth. This was the war he had known and lived as a boy. Hiding, fear, then betrayal and imprisonment and death. He had to get out soon. Before he panicked.

How could Gabby claim that her God made sense of the senseless! Why, why, why? Why this struggle and war? From within the deepest part of him, David was angry. Before, he had known that life was tragic and that survival meant dependence on himself alone. And he had survived. But now, by some cruel irony, he believed in Someone bigger and beyond, and he was caught in that belief.

Before, he would have known how to simply get Anne-Marie out of Algeria. Quickly, methodically, feelings aside. But now a heaviness engulfed him, as if he must somehow ask permission from this God to do it his way. Or did this God have another way?

L’Eternel combattra pour vous et vous gardez le silence.

It was a round the children sang at the orphanage, a verse taken straight from the Bible. He knew the context. Moses had led the Israelites out of Egypt. Now the Egyptian army was at their backs, the Red Sea before them. And what did Moses say? “The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent!”

Oh, how maddening was this God. He was always asking the strangest things of His people. Why was David remembering that verse now? He laughed wryly. Maybe it was prophetic. The FLN was behind them and the Mediterranean was in front. Was this crazy God going to open up this sea too?

It was a matter of trust, Gabby had said. Trust. But trust seemed so stagnant. Did trust have feet and a brain? Did trust act? Was trust always silent?

David did not know, and his head ached from trying to figure it out. He closed his eyes and formed a silent prayer in his mind.
In two days, God. In two days we will leave. Come with us, please. Come with us.

A hollow gnawing inside of Eliane Cebrian reminded her what the day held as she awakened to a gray dawn. Today she was loading her three precious children into their car with two small suitcases and heading for Algiers. And sometime very soon she would kiss Rémi good-bye for who knew how long and sail to France.

Just the thought made her eyes sting with tears. She stared out the window, her hand against the cool pane, and saw in the distance the orange groves and farther out the olive trees soon to be laden with fruit. Her stomach turned, and she rested her head against the window.

She was only thirty-one, a gregarious young woman with three small children. She loved for her house to be filled with people, with the smell of roasting fowl and brewing tea. She delighted in bustling through the farmhouse, serving her guests, changing the baby, laughing with Madira, the maid.

Gazing again out the window, she saw her husband deep in conversation with the farmhands, Abdul and Amar. She buried her head in her hands and cried. All she had ever known, all she had ever wanted for her family was this little farmhouse on the outskirts of Algiers.

She closed her eyes and remembered yesterday. Madira had clung to her, the young woman’s face streaked with tears. “But, madame, you must not leave! What will become of us? We need you! Algeria needs you.”

It had been the echo throughout the village as she had bade farewell to the shopkeepers. “Don’t go. Perhaps there will finally be peace. Don’t go.”

But Rémi was insistent. He had been there three days ago when the peaceful march had turned into a bloodbath. She would never forget the expression on his face when he returned home late that afternoon—a mixture of disgust, fatigue, and terror. He was covered in blood, and at first Eliane thought he had been hurt. But Rémi’s wounds were not physical.

That day his dream to stay in Algeria had died. “You must leave,” he’d said flatly. “As soon as possible.”

It was not the first time either of them had witnessed the treacheries of this war, but Rémi decided it would be the last, at least for his wife and children. He wanted his family out, safe in France, and he promised to come soon after.

Eliane heard the soft padding of little feet entering her room.

Four-year-old Rachel looked up with her cherubic blue eyes. “Is it time to get up, Mama?”

Eliane wiped her eyes, knelt down, and pulled the child to her breast. “Yes, you may get up. But don’t wake baby José … Shh.” Before Rachel could turn to leave, six-year-old Samuel appeared.

“It’s today,
n’est-ce pas
, Mama? It’s today we leave?” His dark-brown eyes were sober for once, and Eliane read the worry in them.

“Yes, dear, Papa will take us to the boat today.”

He wrinkled his brow and peered at her from behind his long brown bangs. “But, Mama, I never got to tell El Amin good-bye.”

“I know,
mon chéri
, and I am so sorry. But I’m afraid there is no time. We’ll be leaving after lunch.”

The baby began wailing in the next room, and Eliane hurried to get him. Holding José, and with the other two children huddled around her, she felt tears forming again in her eyes. “Come now, it’s time for breakfast,” she called as she bustled to the kitchen.

As she busied herself with the children, Eliane tried to imagine the streets of France. A French citizen she might be, but all she had ever known was Algeria. And now her country was chasing her away. But what did she have to look forward to in France? What would they do? Where would they live? Would anyone help them?

Rémi always looked ahead. The men at the church called him a visionary. Not that he had actual visions, but he saw and knew things. “The whole pied-noir population is going to leave in a big hurry,” he had predicted last January. “If we wait till the end, there will be no help left in France. You go on, Eliane. It is best.”

“Dear God,” Eliane prayed, “please help us. You have promised. Don’t leave us now.”

She whistled a happy melody and played with the children as she scurried about packing last little treasures in the two suitcases. But her heart was heavy. She was packing up her life to leave, but would there be orange groves and palm trees and bright bougainvillea in France? What would life be like on the other side of the wide sea?

The children were playing in the dirt behind the house. Eliane had scolded them once and then decided to let them play one last time. She placed three neatly folded shirts in the trunk that was already overflowing with clothes. She smiled to herself, knowing that somehow Rémi would get it closed.

This was the trunk she was packing for the future. She could not hope to manage it now, along with the children, but Rémi promised he would send it later, when she got settled. In this trunk she would store the rest of her treasures. The photo albums, the silver baby cups, the framed photographs, the children’s books, a few favorite pieces of china, the family Bible that traced the Cebrian heritage back to the early Huguenots. Someday these treasures would decorate her home in France, she assured herself. Or perhaps, and this was her fervent prayer, someday they would return to the farm here in Algeria. Once the madness calmed. Surely then they could return.

She knew that Rémi secretly hoped for this too. He had decided to stay behind and protect the farm from the Arabs’ looting. His rifles were placed under each window, and he had already used them more than once. She shuddered. Too many horrible memories of Arab against European and random murders, year after bloody year.

A thick envelope sat on the bed that was now bare except for a pair of worn floral sheets. A heavy sigh escaped Eliane’s lips. What was she to do with the testament of Captain Maxime Duchemin? She had been declared the executor of the will, but the Duchemins’ only child, the sole beneficiary, had disappeared. Four years had passed since the captain and his wife had died in the massacre.

To think they had been neighbors. And now they too were dead, their farmhouse empty, abandoned. Eliane remembered the Duchemins’ beautiful little daughter traipsing through the orange groves with her Arab friends. So long ago. Later the girl had given birth when she was barely more than a child herself. And now she too was most likely dead. There had been no word from her since her parents’ death.

Eliane closed her eyes to shut out the possibilities. Better think practically now. The best, Rémi had assured her, was to pack the testament in the trunk with their valuables. Perhaps one day the Lord would see fit to reveal to them what should be done. Rémi had said it reverently, full of faith. Eliane laughed to herself. Dear Rémi. He believed the Lord would come down and touch him on the shoulder if he needed. And sometimes it seemed as if the Lord did just that.

Time dragged on slowly, filling her with dread. Better that it be over quickly, Eliane thought, than endure this prolonged torture.

She heard Samuel laugh loudly and looked out the window to see his best friend, El Amin, racing across the field to greet him. Eliane’s heart stung again, and she could not stop the tears. El Amin, Madira’s son, had grown up beside Samuel. They had shared everything during their short lives. She remembered Madira’s words last year as the two young mothers had watched their boys playing soldiers.

“They do not know that they are playing the truth. Friends betraying each other. Friends killing each other. They play with plastic guns, but other friends hold hard metal in their hands and fire at each other.” Her eyes had been deep and sad.

“Why must life be so unjust, Mme Eliane, why? Where in the politics is there room for Algerians and pied-noirs who are friends?” Madira had shaken her head as the sound of little boys fighting and laughing echoed in the background.