Sirocco Page 13

  * * *

  “Keep your fingers curled behind the blade, like this.” Pépé’s voice brought me back to the kitchen table, to the garlic cloves and bunch of parsley.

  I kneeled on a chair and followed his instructions. “Comme çà, Pépé?”

  “Oui, comme çà.”

  Unconvinced that my chopping looked at all like his, I watched Pépé from the corner of my eye to discern whether he was serious. I concluded that he must be, since his thin lips seemed to smile and the rest of his face looked sincere. Reassured, I followed his lead and wiped my hand on his dishtowel, then crossed my arms on the table and sighed contentedly. “What do we do now, Pépé?”

  “Now ….” He patted the liver pieces dry and spread flour in a plate. “We coat them with flour and fry them in olive oil.”

  The kitchen filled with the wonderful aroma of sizzling meat as Pépé browned one side then the other in a shower of spitting oil. The last piece he flipped on its raw side immediately jumped out of the pan into an arch and splashed into the water-filled tub at the side of the stove. I screamed and jumped back in surprise, then squatted, hands on the tub’s rim, nose almost touching the water. My eyes searched beyond the faint reflection of my face and latched onto the half-browned liver, zigzagging lazily in its descent to the bottom of the tub.

  Still crouching, I craned my neck and looked up at Pépé. He held his grease-dripping spatula aloft, glanced at the drowned meat then looked at my face and chuckled, “Attention. It’s alive.”

  My head snapped back to the liver. It stirred. I jumped to my feet with a shriek and held onto his pants. “It’s not dead, Pépé?”

  “It was cut up into pieces. Of course it’s dead.” He laughed as I had never seen him laugh before and I laughed along with him. Then I asked, “What’s funny, Pépé?”

  “You, ma petite. You should have seen the look on your face when the liver jumped.”

  He raised his chin from side to side to stretch his neck. Then he bent down and grabbed the piece of liver. It dripped, gray and sad.

  “What do we do now, Pépé?”

  “We’ll dry it and finish cooking it with the other pieces; then we’ll throw in the parsley, the garlic, and add some vinegar.”

  I curled my lips in disgust. “But it’s dirty, Pépé.”

  “On the contrary, ma petite, it got washed twice.” Then with a twinkle in his eyes he whispered, “But let’s keep it a secret between you and me, d’accord?” He chuckled again, making me giggle.

  I never knew Pépé Honninger could be so nice and funny. His laughter made me feel so good that I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him.

  But I knew I shouldn’t.

  I knew it wasn’t right to love him because when he and Papa argued, Papa was always right. My heart told me so. He was my pa. He was beautiful and knew everything about everything. I wanted to please him all the time. And I wanted him to love me. But, even though I knew because Papa didn’t like him that Pépé was not a nice man, today, like this, Pépé and me alone, I felt good being with him. Still, Papa wouldn’t like me kissing him. So I didn’t.

  It was much better to love Pépé Vincent, Papa’s Papa. Pa would never get mad at me for that. Besides, I loved my Pépé Vincent with all my heart.

  Pépé Vincent

  From my first memory of him, Pépé Vincent had been MON Pépé. He was all mine and I was all his. In fact, I loved him even more than I loved the crunchy-honey zlabeiyas. I understood “Pépé” was his name like Papa was Pa’s name and Maman was Ma’s name.

  In my heart, the name “Pépé” held the magic warmth I felt when my hand became lost in his rough paw or when he smiled at me. But then I met Pépé Honninger and was told to call him Pépé too. When I cried and stubbornly refused, they explained that a pépé is the papa of a papa or the papa of a maman.

  But how could this be? How can a pépé be a papa? If Pépé Vincent is the papa of Papa and Pépé Honninger is the papa of Maman, alors, does that mean my papa and maman are my pépés too? I kept getting more confused as each explained in turn and then asked, “Do you understand, now?”

  I’d poke a finger into my nose and shake my head. “Nonnn.” In the end they gave up. Papa turned his back on me and said to Maman, “She’s bloody stupid.”

  I cried. Maman blew my nose and was mad. “How can you speak like this about your own daughter?”

  Papa said, “She’s your daughter. Not mine.”

  This was another thing that I didn’t understand. When I was good, Papa said I was his daughter, but when I was not so good he said I was Maman’s daughter. I tried hard to please Papa so I’d be his daughter all the time, but then things never seemed to stay the same and I did not know why.

  Papa must be right, I am bloody stupid—even though I can’t see any blood on me, I still must be stupid. Maybe I will understand when I am older, like Maman says.

  In time, I realized the magic that made MY Pépé Vincent unique was not in the word “pépé.” Rather, it was that the magic lived deep inside him. It was in his warm eyes and in the smile that showed his big teeth underneath his square moustache. It was on his bulbous nose with the blue dot on the left side. It was the smell of his cologne, cigarette smoke, and dry cement.

  In time I understood that even though there were lots of pépés in the world, Pépé Vincent was unique. That he was still all mine and I was still all his.

  I went on loving him with all my heart, still even more than the zlabeiyas. Until many years later when I was fifteen and he lay in bed, dying.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Papa and Maman at Alger, where they drove Pépé Vincent to see an oncologist.

  Une Glace à la Vanille

  July, 1959

  Two weeks after my fifteenth birthday, I leaned my forearms against the railing of my bedroom’s second-floor balcony. Behind me, Pépé Vincent dozed in his sick bed. In the yard below, my brothers raised sprays of gravel, playing soccer. My sisters took turns swinging one end of the jump rope, the other end attached to the gate.

  From my window, I watched the rare car and the inevitable military vehicle speed along the street. Sitting in the back of the trucks, young soldiers whistled and waved at me. Though their rowdy calls led me to think I might be attractive, bolstering my ego, I feigned indifference.

  I burned with the desire to wave and blow kisses back at them, but it was simply not done. Especially not under the averted eyes of our Arab neighbors, subtle as Abel looking upon Cain. Not unless I wished to scuttle my reputation and shame my family. More importantly, its male members. Most important of all, my Father.

  There was a price to pay for such faux pas. Rumor had it that European men had sheared the hair of European women who had been “friendly” with Patos soldiers—the soldiers from France. I shivered at the thought of losing my hair that way and being labeled an “easy” girl. But then, as humiliating as this Pied-Noir equivalent of the Scarlet Letter might be, it was not as brutal as the Sharia law of stoning wayward Arab women.

  My wandering thoughts raised the hair on my forearms. A chill that even the scorching sun could not thaw. I inhaled deeply, thankful not to have been born in a culture whose laws were much harsher than mine. Thankful that when the time came for me to be married, I wouldn’t, as young Arab women did, have a mother-in-law waiting outside the nuptial bedroom to examine the proof of my broken hymen. To wave the blood-stained sheet amid ululations from the women’s quarters, divulging my most intimate secret and inviting all to witness that my husband had picked the prized bloom of my maidenhood. Pronouncing me, and by extension, my family, decent.

  Behind me, Pépé Vincent coughed. I turned and looked at the white sheet blurring the contours of his shrunken body. When Pépé had fallen ill with cancer of the liver, Papa, upon learning that hospital care wouldn’t be better at this stage than homecare, had installed an extra bed in Zizou’s and my bedroom.

  I knelt at Pépé’s bedside and touched his hand.
“Do you want some water, Pépé?”

  “Non. I would ….” His unfocused eyes searched the room.

  “Do you want to eat, Pépé?”

  He seemed to search for what he wanted. Maybe look for the right words. “Oui, I would … I would like ….” He licked his chapped lips. “J’aimerais une glace.”

  Ice cream? “You want une glace à la vanille ou au chocolat?”

  “Vanille.”

  “I’ll get it for you, Pépé.”

  I stood, closed the shutters and pulled the bedroom door shut behind me, looking for Maman.

  “Ma, can you believe it? Pépé wants une glace à la vanille.”

  “Et bien?”

  “How am I going to walk one-and-a-half kilometers carrying ice cream in this heat? By the time I get home the only thing left will be a big mess.”

  Maman pulled a few Francs from her wallet. “Ask Abdullah to wrap it with butcher paper and walk fast.”

  Zizou and Mireille were still jumping rope in the front yard. I opened the little black gate with the mail box and called, “You coming, Zizou?”

  She stuck the end of the rope into Mireille’s hands and came running. While the gate slammed behind us, Mireille yelled, “Can I come too?”

  “Non,” Zizou yelled back. “You’ll slow us down.”

  Twenty minutes later we returned home out of breath and red as boiled lobsters from the heat. Zizou collapsed in the shade of the yard, next to Mireille. “You and Nanna always do things together and never want me along,” she reproached.

  She was right. Where Zizou went, I went and where I went so did Zizou. I hurried upstairs; not only bearing Pépé’s ice cream, but also feeling a grating sense of unease for keeping our younger sister at arm’s length.

  I gave Maman her change and opened the small ice cream container. “It didn’t melt too much.”

  Maman held out a spoon and cloth napkin. “Take these along.”

  In the bedroom, I knelt at Pépé’s bedside. His eyes were closed and his breathing shallow. I put the ice cream beside his leg and laid my hand on his heart. His barrel chest had withered to skin and bone and the strong lungs once mighty as a blacksmith’s bellow now barely filled. I was wavering between waking him and losing the ice cream when he growled, “What do you want?”

  “Here is your glace, Pépé. I got it for you. Vanille, just like you wanted.” I spread the napkin under his chin and offered him a spoonful. “It’s still hard.”

  “I don’t want it.” His voice exhaled in a raw whisper and his dull eyes closed.

  I stared at the stubble on his hollow cheeks and, swallowing hard against his rejection, returned to the kitchen. Throat tight as a fist. Tears prickling my eyelids.

  Maman sat, knitting, while the chicken cooked. “Didn’t Pépé like his glace?”

  I dropped the container of ice cream, spoon, and napkin on the table and croaked, tears in my throat, “He said he doesn’t want it,” but I thought, He doesn’t love me anymore.

  As if reading my mind, Ma locked eyes with me. “He is not himself, ma fille. The pain and drugs muddle his brain.” Still knitting, she gave a curt nod toward the ice cream. “Mange-la.”

  “Non, Ma. I can’t eat it.”

  “Why not? It will only melt.”

  I shook my head. All my life, Pépé had spun a cocoon of love around me. Now that he lay in a bed that was not even his, in a house that belonged to others, his last vestige of privacy and dignity lost, I cringed and whined like a brainless puppy. Even worse—I was nothing but a squirming worm not even worthy of being fish bait.

  “Non, Ma, I can’t eat it. Do you think it’ll keep in the glacière until he wants it again?”

  “Not for long.”

  One reason we never had ice cream at home was that we didn’t own a refrigerator. We used a glacière—a small wooden ice box, lined with zinc. Behind the two thick doors, a metal rack held the food above a block of ice, which, every other day, the ice man brought in—a chunk of ice clear as crystal with tiny air bubbles trapped inside. The glacière was not as efficient as a refrigerator, but we shopped almost every day, and it kept the food fresh until we cooked it.

  I knelt in front of the ice box, hammered small chunks out of the block of ice, wrapped them around the carton of ice cream inside a dish towel and put the bundle into the ice box.

  In the kitchen, Maman retrieved the cooked chicken from the oven, put it down on the stovetop, and covered it with a dishtowel. “I am going to lie down for a while until Papa comes home. Call if Pépé needs me.”

  Ever since Pépé’s cancer had worsened, Ma was perpetually exhausted.

  When he became bedridden, Pépé relied on Maman for all his needs. I could tell that his total dependence on his daughter-in-law was even more agonizing to his self-esteem than the relentless teeth gnawing at his liver.

  * * *

  Two days earlier, after carrying a pan of warm water to Pépé’s bedside, I had waited there, wanting to lend a hand. Maman put down the towel and soap she carried and said, “You may go now.”

  “Non, Ma. I want to help.”

  “Later, ma fille.”

  Feeling powerless and rejected, I stood on the other side of the closed door and listened. In the midst of sounds of sloshing water, I heard Pépé weep, “Elise, I am so ashamed.”

  “Don’t be silly, Eugene. You are like a father to me. Why wouldn’t I care for you?”

  The woeful sound of his voice raised the hair on my arms. “Merci, ma fille.”

  Unable to bear his pain, I took refuge in the kitchen until Maman joined me. “I think Pépé needs a little company, now,” she had said, wiping her eyes.

  * * *

  While Ma rested in her bedroom, I returned to mine. Pépé had his back to the door, but his uneven breathing told me he only pretended to sleep. I wanted to tell him I loved him but did not know how. I wanted to hug him, but feared he might push me away. Instead, I retrieved my book from under my pillow and sat on the cool tile floor, leaning my back against the closed shutters so that the subdued summer light fell upon the pages and began reading.

  “Cochons!”

  Zizou’s spat word cut through the bedroom door. I set my book on the floor and rose to my feet to check on Pépé. He had fallen asleep. I left the room, closing the door softly behind me, and stepped into the hub of a mini drama.

  Zizou stared at Mireille and the boys the way Moses on Mount Sinai must have stared at the Children of Israel as they lay prostrate before Aaron’s golden calf.

  I put a finger to my lips. “Shuut! Pépé and Maman are sleeping. What’s going on?”

  Zizou hissed, “Look à ces petits cochons! Want to know what they did?”

  Wide-eyed, I shook my head and nodded at the same time. Her outburst was so intimidating, I fell under her spell. Struck mute. Then I got my voice back. “What did these ‘little pigs’ do?”

  One hand resting on her hip, Zizou leaned forward and shook a finger at the kids. “What happened? I’ll tell you what happened. These three petits cochons,” she pointed at Mireille, Riri, and Yves, “ate the ice cream and didn’t even share with us.”

  Crestfallen, I stared at them. “You ate Pépé Vincent’s ice cream?”

  Zizou’s hazel eyes smoldered, challenging me to share her outrage while three pairs of anxious eyes—brown, blue, and gray—fastened to mine as to a safe harbor amid angry seas.

  Mireille and the boys looked so wretched and, if one could believe it, so innocent and their sin seemed so minor. I pointed at Yves’s mouth with mock wrath, “Sinner, the evidence of your crime betrays you. Repent!”

  Zizou’s chin quivered. Her lips pinched before parting in a chuckle. Mireille and Riri wiped their own upper lips before pointing accusing indexes at Yves. “Repent, sinner. Repent!”

  Yves stepped back. “WHAAAT?”

  He was feeling his mustache of crusted ice cream when a sharp explosion made him jump. The five of us grabbed one another in a protective
cluster. Maman tore out of her bedroom and stopped short. Her glance skipped over each of us in turn like a pebble skips on water.

  Reassured we were safe, she ordered, “Go to my bedroom.”

  Zizou and the kids scampered to the relative security of Ma’s bedroom, but I followed her to Pépé Vincent’s bedside. She touched his shoulder. “Vous allez bien Papa?”

  He nodded. “I’m fine, ma fille, I’m fine,” then croaked, “The blast came from up the street.”

  Maman went to the window, crouched, pushed the shutters ajar, and peeked through the balcony’s scrollwork. “It’s not Saiids’ place.” She straightened, leaned warily over the railing, and peered farther up the road.

  Then she jerked around, hands flying to her mouth. “It’s La Guinguette.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Grenade

  La Guinguette? Shards of ice then sparks of heat stung my body. “Ma, Pépé Honninger’s there.” I took off down the stairs. Past the little gate with the letter box.

  “Nanna!” Ma shouted.

  I sprinted up the street.

  I reached La Guinguette’s terrace, wheezing, ears whooshing like the inside of a conch shell.

  A military patrol was already there. A soldier barred my way. “You cannot go in, mademoiselle.”

  I stepped around him. “My grandfather’s in there,”

  He grabbed my arm. “Sorry. You can’t go in.”

  I jerked my arm free. “Why can’t I go in?” Then, suddenly, I panicked. “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I must see him!” I took his hand, my tears blurring his face. “Please.”

  He took a step back. “What does he look like?”

  I sobbed, “He’s old, tall, and he’s thin and well dressed. He has gray hair and glasses, and his name’s Pierre Honninger. They call him Pierro.”