Chapter 1
The room was not terribly small but there was about it an overwhelming air of constriction as if once inside its walls one would never escape. Its walls were a dull buff color streaked in places with cracks and smudges which through long existence had become indelible like the lines on a man's face. The ceiling was not low-a dozen feet above the floor-but it, too, was patterned with cracks meandering like little streams, erupting in places into a veritable lake of dull color where a whole patch of whitewash had flaked off leaving to view the older hue of previous ceilings. There was one small window, cloudy with dust over most of its expanse, grimy round its edges where a dirty blue putty was breaking off. The window looked out onto an air shaft more constricting than the room itself, dark and dirty with pieces of newspaper from ten years back on its floor and strange vegetable messes like mixtures of decomposed potatoes and cabbages. This was the only window to the room and, even when the sun was shining, the shaft was so dark that the light had to be kept on in most of the rooms that looked onto it. The light in the room was a single 25-watt bulb, suspended naked from the ceiling. It seemed unwilling to reach the corners, as if it were exploring unknown territory and did not trust itself to move beyond the central circle of its glow. There was a bare wooden table against the wall under the light with a broken, chipped enamel bowl on it and a stool pushed under it. There was a single cupboard with an uneven door which enabled a visitor to see a portion of shabby clothes hung inside. Apart from that the room was bare but for a narrow bed in the gloom of a far corner. On that bed a man lay staring at the shabby ceiling, unmoving, his arms inert at his sides. There was about him an air of hopelessness which immediately gave the clue to the constriction of the room. It might easily have been a prison room; in fact it was difficult to believe that in fact it was a hotel room for which guests paid and in which they lived of their own free will-more or less of their own free will.
After several minutes of complete stillness, the man on the bed rolled over onto his side and changed his unseeing stare from the ceiling to the opposite wall. His body was slim, rather small and his face flatly handsome and dark. His name was Ahmed ben Lulla, his home-if it was still there-was in Algeria. He couldn't be sure that it still existed. His people were unable to write and he had stopped sending them letters some years ago when the hopelessness had begun to set in.
After several minutes more he swung his feet heavily off the bed and sat up. He wore a pair of jeans and a dark brown shirt that looked as if it had seen several campaigns with an active army. He rubbed his hands slowly along his eyelids and blinked slowly. His hands fell back to his sides and then he stood up, pulling himself up as if each limb, each joint fought a separate, losing battle to prevent him. He crossed to the cupboard and opened it. He felt inside without looking, staring still, without seeing anything.
He pulled out a leather jacket which zipped up the front-one of the few solid possessions he had. When he had half zipped it and it clung neatly to his slim frame he went to the door of the room, turned off the switch without looking at the bulb and went out.
From the tiny, uncarpeted landing with the water tap which dripped into a fixed basin he walked heavily down the narrow, bare-boarded staircase which wound round and down, passing several other landings with three or four doors on each.
At the bottom of the staircase two prostitutes were sitting on a stair. They made way for him to pass without a word and he stepped over the threadbare mat, didn't look into the dismal office where mail, for those who ever had any, was kept in little boxes. The door at the end of the short, bare vestibule was open and in the moonlit street beyond an occasional face glanced in and eyes ran over the two prostitutes as someone passed.
He stepped out into the street with a faint feeling of relief which was only momentary and instinctive. It was a narrow street. There were two other shabby hotels in it, with signs in which some of the letters were missing; there were several more prostitutes chatting in doorways. They looked up at him and then immediately resumed their bored conversations.
The street was slightly inclined and he walked down it with a rapidity which was automatic, a reflex which had nothing to do with his mood. He passed through another street, dark and bare, with a few shuttered shops and high, shabby apartment buildings and then he was in the big boulevard where it was still dark and bare but where there were more people and a few lights and a glow some distance off which was the neon-land of Pigalle.
He began to walk towards Pigalle, passing the tiny bars where he would normally have drunk a black coffee and chatted with acquaintances. Tonight he didn't want to see anybody, but he wanted to be surrounded by humanity, a humanity which had no relation to him, to which he was a complete stranger, a humanity that by its own, recognizable, agonized existence would, perhaps, make him feel less afraid and self-concerned.
The boulevard began to light up, as if he'd been walking through a forest getting nearer and nearer to a glade where the sun was brightest.
The bars became bigger and more frequent, throwing their brash light out across the road; neon signs had sprung up on both sides, shop windows were ablaze for night window shoppers, crowds thronged around the foyers of bigger and bigger cinemas, the traffic grew thicker and thicker, gliding along a dual carriageway; on the broad stretch of pavement and trees which separated the two roadways, people were buying the last edition of France Soir from the gaudy booths; he began to hear English and German mixed with the French and the Arabic which formed the background.
In Pigalle the lights flickered in a fluid pattern like colored fountains, distracting the eye with unexpected explosions. The bars were filled with tight-skirted, jut-buttocked whores, their low-cut blouses revealing the lack of brassieres beneath as they leaned over pinball machines and tried to pick up American GIs on leave from Fontainebleau and elsewhere. Commissionaires invited the passing crowd to see "the most daring nudes in the world" and dark doorways offered "genuine strip-teases every two hours from 3 till midnight."
Ahmed ben Lulla paused beside a bright charcuterie in which the multi-colored dishes seemed almost to be alive. He studied the price tags: "macedoine de legumes, 600 jr. le \ilo."
"cervelas, 800 fr.. "
"champignons grecs, I,100 jr." He felt saliva gather in his mouth and his throat constricted in a small torment of frustration. He hated these expensive little shops which stayed open late for the tourist and charged prices which only tourists would pay. He walked on and, at a small, steaming counter which jutted onto the pavement from the cafe behind, he bought a small carton of chips for 60 francs and continued to walk, eating ravenously until there was nothing left and he could roll up the greasy little carton and throw it in the kerb. He wiped his hands on his jeans and turned up a side street which ran steeply off the boulevard, up toward the Butte Montmartre.
He turned into a little bar and sat down at a small table beside the window that looked out onto the street. He was going to order a coffee but changed his mind and asked for beer instead. Then he asked himself what good a single beer would do. What good would a single anything do?
When the beer was brought and placed before him on a little cork mat, he sat watching the foam slowly disintegrate until the golden liquid beneath was shadowing darkly through the last white-veined bubbles.
Tonight they had come to his hotel. He had known they would come, it had been inevitable. He had, of course, made his excuses and they had, as he'd known they would, rejected them. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some coins-534 francs that was all. Of course he would have a little more in a few days' time, his assistance, for he'd been unable to find a job for several months. But he could hardly live on that and he owed a month's rent. And now, when at last he'd refused to pay his contribution because he didn't want to starve and he wasn't interested in politics anyway, they'd come and told him that" he must pay or be killed. He had two days.
It wasn't a big sum, but for him it was a lot and he wasn't interested in them. That was what hurt. He wasn't interested in them. Nor their murders, their "Algirie pour les Algeriens." He wasn't interested in politics, in revolution, in violence. He wanted a quiet, simple life with enough to eat and drink and a place to live. He'd been mistaken to come to France-all those promises of work-but now he couldn't get back and all he wanted was a quiet life with a chance of improving his lot.
So, after paying for so long, after going without food for three days in order to pay, after not being able to buy the cheap shoes he needed, to pay, after lying and begging to keep his hotel room in spite of arrears, to pay. After all that he'd decided to hell with them and he hadn't paid. And so they had come, four of them. It was hardly surprising. They had been stern but not brutal. They had simply made it clear he had to pay and it was not their concern how he found the money to pay. The National Liberation Front was bigger and more important than any individual with his petty little problems of eating and finding a roof and clothing.
Then they had gone, saying they would be back. And he had lain on his bed for three hours, dulled with hopelessness because he knew he couldn't pay and wasn't going to pay.
He sipped the beer and looked abstractedly out of the window. Opposite, a young prostitute with large, firm breasts was encouraging passers-by to take her upstairs in the hotel by the door of which she stood. Farther along a couple of older whores stood in an apparently blase unconcern at the proximity of their more attractive neighbor. Ahmed looked back at his beer. All the bubbles had gone-lost, dead, finished. There was no hope anywhere.