Visions of Isabelle (31 page)

"I'm desperate," she tells him. "I'm looking for a job."

"I'd hire you at once," he says, "but I'm resigning next week to start a journal of my own. Would you be interested in writing for me there?"

"What do you pay?"

"Not a cent–for a year at least, until I can get the thing on its feet."

She studies him, carefully inspects his handsome face. Then she laughs.

"I shall always be poor–it is written. Tell me about your new review."

Barrucand describes
Ahkbar
in which libertarian articles will be printed on facing pages in Arabic and French. The paper will publicize injustices and become the voice of the voiceless illiterate mass. Its purpose will be to transform Algeria from a society of oppressors and oppressed into a land of interracial brotherhood.

"I like it," she says, and then slapping her knee: "I believe what you say. What do you want me to do?"

"Seek out injustice and name names. Investigate the scandals and pillory the ones who exploit the country for themselves."

"And how do you know I can write?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm a good editor. What I like is the look of your name upon the page. Isabelle Eberhardt! That's a scandal in itself. And with Victor Barrucand, the most hated man in Algiers, we have a combination that will make them sweat."

"They'll have diarrhea every morning at the Palais du Gouvernement."

"The very effect I wish to inspire."

She thinks a moment, then shakes his hand.

H
e invites her that night to dinner at Villa Bellevue. She likes his house, finds its shining white terrazzo floors, its glassed-in arches framing the sea, a pleasant change from Slimen's lowly apartment in Ténès. And she likes Barrucand, too–he's warm and decent, the first Frenchman she's met in the colony who doesn't hold Arabs in contempt.

"I should be exploring the south," she tells him, gulping down her drink, "not suffering the taunts of little people in a horrid provincial town. There's nothing they can do to me that hasn't already been done, but where–where is my youth? I'm twenty-five years old!"

Barrucand laughs, offers her another drink, then listens in amazement as she tells him the story of her life and goes through a bottle of his best cognac in two hours and a half. At the end of the evening, when she is finally done, she falls down fast asleep on his best Berber rug.

T
he next morning they begin work on
Ahkbar
, outlining stories, planning the format and the point-of-view.

"Once I wanted to write novels," she admits to him, "but I didn't have the talent, and I despised all the writers I met. But journalism's different. It would give my travels a purpose. I hate the system here and long to tear it down."

He lends her a horse and in the afternoons she roams the countryside around Algiers. One day, on one of her rides, she comes into a town and stumbles upon a disquieting scene. A third-rate European, with an arrogant interpreter on one side and an armed gendarme on the other, has set up a table in the village square. All the peasants in the district are waiting before him in lines for compensation for their expropriated land. While the European dispenses centimes for the ancestral acres, Isabelle observes closely and takes careful notes. Then back at Bellevue she unleashes all her outrage in a stinging short piece she entitles
"Criminel."

Barrucand loves it and decides to publish it as a broadside to publicize his forthcoming A
hkbar
.
"Criminel"
creates a sensation, and in Algiers, once again, her name is on people's lips. She is pleased and returns to Ténès, where she is surprised to find Slimen in a rage.

"So this is what you've been doing," he shouts at her, his hand trembling as he brushes the broadside across her face. "You disappear to Algiers, take up with some new man and write rubbish that can ruin my career."

"Your career," she tells him calmly, "is a farce. It was my gift to you–a gift I'm beginning to regret."

"An Arab wife belongs in the home!"

"But I'm Si Mahmoud, your brother–not some Arab wife. I'm not Fatima or Zohra–you can't order me around. It's really terrible, Slimen, the way you've gotten yourself confused. You want to be a French pig and an Arab at the same time."

Furious he slams the door, but an hour later returns with tears in his eyes.

"If it weren't for you, Si Mahmoud, I'd still be a sergeant in the Spahis. I'm sorry for what I said. I had no right."

"Your trouble, Slimen, is that you've been corrupted by the French. Don't be a fool and fall into their nasty trap. They are nice to you in the hope that you'll control me and keep me off their backs. At the same time they remind you how easily you could lose your job. Well, I say screw the job! We can live without money, but without freedom I'm dead."

R
amadan, to which she's always looked forward if only because the bodily torment of the fast gives her a feeling of spiritual cleanliness and expiated guilt, falls, this particular year, in the somber rainy month of December. Between the storms she goes to sit on a rock overlooking the sea, and there, hungry and alone, she ponders for long periods the mess she's making of her life. The marriage with Slimen is clearly not working out, and she feels terror, too, at the neurasthenic melancholy that comes upon her frequently and which she believes is a symptom of a family disease. "The curse of the De Moerders" she calls it, thinking of the morose natures of Vava and her brothers.

She makes a pilgrimage with Slimen to the great mosque at El-Hammel where she stands in an alcove and becomes moved by the endless repetitions of God's name she finds her body, despite her will, begin to sway in time to the muted whispered prayers. As a trance begins to take possession, she feels she could happily submerge herself in monastic gloom, far from the civilized world that has caused her so much grief.

But later, on the way back to Ténès, she realizes how far she really is from that. Though attracted to stoicism and renunciation, she is always yielding to ecstasy and desire. Sex, absinthe, the heightened vision induced by kif, the feeling of burning sun and Saharan wind, sand against her flesh, the taste of water, after a lengthy desert journey, drawn from a deep cool well–these are her greatest pleasures, and she cannot imagine giving any of them up.

O
ne morning, on her way out of the apartment, after Slimen has gone off to work, she finds an unsealed package pushed against the door. She opens it and finds a horrible, shriveled, stinking fish with a piece of paper clenched between its teeth.

"Ehnni," it says, "your wife is unfaithful! She and Barrucand are trying to topple the regime!"

Isabelle scoffs and throws the note and the fish into the street. But the next morning, when Slimen arrives at his office, he finds a drawing of horns glued to his desk. Overpowered by rage he dashes out of the Hôtel de Ville, rushes home and rips the covers from on top of Isabelle who is still asleep.

"Pig!" he shouts. "Whore! An Arab man has the right to kill his woman for less!"

Amazed by his outburst, and his reference to herself as his "woman," she demands to know what she's done.

"Don't lie," he cries. "They're mocking me in the town. I'm a cuckold! You're an adulteress! Tell me who he is!"

She stares up at him with stupefaction. "Poor brother," she moans. "'He' does not exist!"

He shakes her. She is thrilled to see his passions so aroused, and for an instant remembers the savage whom she loved, and who has been lost to her for so long a time.

"Tell me–so I may kill him. Otherwise I shall kill myself!"

"And why not me–why not kill me first?"

"I love you too much!"

"Then choke it out of me! Squeeze my throat until I cough out his name!"

He stands back in anguish. "You mock me, too! Never mind! I shall shoot myself!"

He rushes from the room. She chases after him.
At last
, she thinks,
a scene worthy of my life.

After a frustrated search he finds his revolver. They struggle over it, but he manages to get his finger around the trigger. Then, as they flail about the room, fighting, screaming, they hear a hard dry click that stops them cold.

"My God!" he cries. "It's empty!"

He goes back to the bedroom, throws himself upon the bed, sobs and weeps until she gently caresses his head.

"Poor brother," she says. "See what they've done. The jackals! "

"You promise there was no one?" he mutters, his mouth pressed against the mattress.

"No one," she says.

"Not even Barrucand?"

"Not even him."

"Oh, Si Mahmoud, I was certain you'd betrayed me. I know what you think of me. I know I fill you with contempt. You should have married a brilliant man–not a clod like me. Without you I'm nothing–nothing at all."

She is seized, then, suddenly, with a great ennui, a deep feeling of uselessness and self-disgust.

"Oh, Slimen..." Her eyes fill with tears. He reaches to embrace her, but she turns away.

Later, when he is calm, and has prepared himself to go back to work, he finds a note beneath a vase of flowers on the table where they eat:

"There's a full moon tonight–let's die beneath it. Bring the revolver (loaded!) and a bottle of absinthe. I'll meet you at midnight on the beach."

She comes to the rendezvous fully prepared to die. She has no further use for life, feels she is destroying both of them by her misery and her drink, and that they will be better off with a quick romantic death. A double suicide seems the perfect solution.
Then
, she thinks,
the animal who sent those notes will see what he has done.

She is touched, when Slimen arrives, by his white burnoose. She imagines how nice the blood will look against the nubby wool.

He sits beside her, his face grave.

"It will be beautiful," he says. "I have often dreamed of a melancholy death upon the sand."

"The beach is not the desert, but it will do as well."

Slimen, enraptured by the thought, begins to recite an ancient desert verse. He sings of night and death, and when he finishes he quotes to her from the Koran.

It is her turn now, and she wishes to show him that though she's a European she knows Arabic even better than he. After a deep swig from the bottle–which is a sacrilege and which she prays God will forgive–she launches upon a long improvisation in a rich, florid, Tunisian style.

Slimen, ashamed at being outdone, tries again, and she taunts him when he makes a bad rhyme. They drink more, then continue the contest, but soon Isabelle gives up, lying back, preferring to listen to Slimen's deep Saharan growl.

By 2:00 A.M. they are drunk, and she's begun to stomp about the beach.

"Tell me a story, Si Mahmoud–a good one before we end our lives."

"No," she snaps, marching this way and that, sometimes stumbling in the sand.

"I love you, Slimen, and I don't love you at all. I love what you were, and I hate what you've become. Our marriage was a mistake. I only did it to become French, so that I could get back here. No–that's not true. I did love you. I suffered over you. I thought of you every moment I was heaving garbage in Marseilles. That's what kept me going–the thought that I had a great love in my life. Ridiculous! The whole time in El Oued I was mad. All those rides we made across the dunes–they were wonderful–do you remember?–but we didn't know what we were doing, we were infatuated, and it was all like a dream. Yes–we must kill ourselves. It's the only way. We must end our misery; let God reclaim our souls. We suffer too much, my brother–the world is too harsh for us, and we can only find happiness in dreams."

After that they drink more, and then fall asleep. At dawn, awakened by the first rays of the sun, they search about for the revolver, finally find it buried in the sand then make their way back shamefaced to town.

After this adventure, which she admits to herself has been absurd, she flees once again to Algiers and the Villa Bellevue, where for months she devotes herself to
Ahkbar
, writing articles, making brief trips into the
bled
.

O
n April 23, the Association of Algerian Journalists gives a banquet in honor of Emile Loubet, the president of France. Barrucand, wangling an extra ticket, takes her as his guest.

From the moment they alight from their carriage at the door of the Hotel St. George, Isabelle causes a stir. The other women, in their flowing Parisian gowns, are scandalized by her brilliant tarboosh, white Arab robe and red Spahi boots. While everyone mills in the lobby, waiting for the visiting president and governor-general Jonnart, she feels herself the cause of delirious buzzing on the part of the other guests.

"We're a sensation," whispers Barrucand, and she grins at the thought.

Visiting newsmen who have accompanied the president from Paris ask their Algerian colleagues who she is.