The Infidel

by Achmed Abdullah

 

THE INFIDEL

by
Achmed Abdullah

ON the night before, they had shot the sergeant, plundered the commissary tent, filled their water-canteens, and deserted.

Somewhere to the Northeast was Tripoli and the open sea. Thence perhaps a chance to escape to Marseilles. And who could find them there? Let them try to dig out half a dozen rats from a thousand holes.

They were all of the same type, all six of them—the képis set back rakishly on their round heads, the hair cropped short, narrow-lidded, beady, black eyes, and square jowls blue with close shaving. Their open tunics showed hairy chests covered with blue tattoo marks—tribal signs in a way. For they all belonged to the same band of Marseilles Apaches. They came from the quarter of Saint Jean. Some of them had been born and bred in its ancient, putrid streets. The others were Corsicans who had made the Salario too hot to hold them. So they had transferred their gentle activities to a land where the vendetta does not always follow.

Balloche had of course taken the lead; not that he had any knowledge of the lie of the land, but he was morally forced to make a bluff at leading. At home, in the quarter of Saint Jean, he had been a great and feared chief; and so the responsibility for this expedition was his. He squinted at the sun and led the way toward the Northeast, straight through the undulating, yellow erg.

Close behind him marched his younger brother, surnamed Canichon le Mak', and then came the others.

They were convict soldiers of the African Battalion, the notorious Bat' d'Af. Burglars, crooks, murderers, highwaymen, vagabonds, pickpockets, cadets, and garroters—Apaches all. They were young. There was not a man of the six more than twenty-four years of age. But they were all tarnished and aged and gray with vice. They were all familiar with the inside of jail and penitentiary. And most of them expected—and rather proudly—to become some day children of La Veuve, the Red Widow—the Guillotine.

But then they were Frenchmen, and so they had to serve their two years in the army. And since it is not good to distribute the spawn of the Outer Boulevards, the fortif's and the Marseilles waterfront among simple, clean peasant lads in red trousers, a wise republic enrols them in a regiment of their own, gives them heavy-fisted Flemings and Normans for sergeants, and sun-burnt, sun-hardened colonial veterans for officers. Then they send them to Tunis, with the devout hope that they will kill the Touaregs or that the Touaregs will kill them. Either is good for France.

It makes also splendid copy for newspapers and for writers of fiction. For back there, in Africa, distance lends roseate enchantment even to an Apache. The sun of Tunis and the Outer Desert sheds sweet halos around their unholy heads. There is a despatch once in a while ... the story of a desert fight ... a hero ... a martyr ... oh, les braves gens ... and the Guillotine is cheated of another prospective customer.

Balloche made a point of boasting that ten times he had deserved capital punishment. As a delicate advertisement of this fact he had a guillotine tattooed on his left shoulder, with the name of his last victim below ... “a sort of alibi” as he called it laughingly. It was a never-ending source of amusement when the half-company stripped for a swim. The conviction that sooner or later Monsieur de Paris would shorten him by a head, held no terror for him.

Gaily singing he marched ahead. And the others took up the riotous refrain:

“D'puis c'est moi le souteneur
Naturel de ma petite soeur ...”

Doubtless they had an idea that they were heroes. They had really deserted in a spirit of bravado. The murder of the sergeant was too small a thing to upset their equanimity. The thought of escape and return to Marseilles had come afterwards. And now they were just a little bit disappointed. The yellow, sun-scorched erg seemed to grimmace at their new-found liberty.

They marched on, carelessly eating their scant provisions and taking long pulls at their water-canteens without thought of the wide desert ahead. Then, on the third day, a little cloud of regret fell on them. Balloche admitted that he had lost his way.

They halted near a shallow water-hole, but it was empty. Digging with their bayonets and with their hands they managed to find a little moist earth. They chewed it and sucked it, spitting out the sand-grains and cursing their luck and each other.

In the cool of early dawn they broke camp. But towards noon they complained that the tropical sun was biting through their heavy boots and blistering their feet so they stopped and erected a low, improvised shelter-tent with the help of their Lebels and bayonets and tunics. Then they fell asleep, and they had pleasant cool dreams of rivers of absinthe and white wine running down mountains of bouillabaisse.

In the evening they found a filthy camel-wallow. They fought over the green, reeking, putrid slime. Ristorucci, one of the Corsicans, was killed in the scuffle. The other five drank and slept.

They had hardly anything left to eat. But the next day there was a ray of hope. They found faint paths in the sand, little shallow holes made by the soft pads of dromedaries, all leading east in a vague, general direction. They thought that they must be near one of the ksours of the Berbers. And so once more they stiffened their backs and their spirits to the long, dragging desert-pull ahead. Once more they burst into profane song.

On the fifth day they had eaten their last morsel of food. They stumbled and fell, weak, played out. Their feet were sore and blistered, their lips cracked and bleeding. And of course there were rage and despair and quarrels.

Canichon le Mak' insulted Ossetti, the Corsican. Ossetti made a savage lunge with his bayonet. And so Balloche killed him, to protect his brother. Taolini, the other Corsican, seemed to lose his reason suddenly. He cried like a woman, he clawed at his eyes, and then he commenced to stuff his mouth full of dry, hot sand.

So the other three left him and marched on. Balloche still in the lead, then his younger brother, and Escragnolles the last.

For a long time they could hear the cries of their comrade whom they had left to die:

“Oh sangu di Cristu ... oh misericordia... O-ohh, per la Madonna...”

Late that afternoon, an hour before the sun went down, they saw a thin, green edge on the horizon.

No—it was not a mirage. It was life—life and water and food and shelter. The trail became more distinct. There was fresh refuse of camels. And suddenly they seemed to be strong and healthy. Vigorously the blood coursed through their veins. They pushed on at a rapid pace. They would be there before night-fall.

And so they marched, marched, marched, supporting each other, encouraging each other with rude jests, singing snatches of ribald songs.

Nearer and nearer they came. Finally they broke into a lope, then into a run. They were saved, saved. Oh, but it was good to live, to breathe!

They could see the feathery green of the date-trees, the grayish green of the eucalypti. They could hear the crunching of the water-wheels, the dull pounding of flat mill-stones. They could smell the sharp, savory smell of kouss-koussou.

Here and there they could see a swarthy Berber moving among the black felt tents. They hailed them. They shouted. They cried with joy.

The Berbers saw them. They recognized the French uniforms though they were in rags.

Then there were developments.

About three months before, while the fighting men of the ksour were away on a razzia to help themselves to the cattle and the belongings of a neighboring tribe, another small band of deserters had visited their village. They had stolen all there was to be stolen. They had eaten all there was to be eaten. They had forced the young girls to wait on them and to dance for them. They had lifted the veils of the married women. And then, in the true spirit of Apaches, they had soiled the well, polluted the mosque, hacked down a dozen date-trees or so, and cut off the beard of the aged village priest.

Therefore, when the three showed their hated uniforms and their hated white faces, the Berbers knew that it was a special sending of All-Merciful Providence. They ran toward them, opening fire with their long-barreled flint matchlocks.

It was all over in a few minutes. Escragnolles and Canichon le Mak' fell dead, hit by a dozen bullets. Balloche returned the fire. Then he ran. The Berbers did not trouble about following him. They left him to the tender mercies of the desert.

To his dying day Balloche could not make for himself a true picture of the days that followed. He had a vague knowledge of running and stumbling and falling, always falling. He also remembered how some fool had mistaken his lungs for an anvil and had beaten it with a dull, thudding, cruel hammer. Then he must have become insane.

There was a veiled picture of a water-hole filled with thick slime and the rotting remains of a young dromedary. He remembered drinking the half-liquid stuff.

Then there was a sirocco ... oh yes, to be sure there was a sirocco ... and he had prayed in a crazy, savage manner. Yes, it is true: he, Balloche, he, the leader of Apaches, the hero of the quarter of Saint Jean, the hater of priests and God ... he had prayed. He had prayed to the Virgin and to Christ and to all the dear Saints. And then he had cried like a child.

Then for a whole day there was a yellow, dancing veil in front of his eyes—a thin, mocking, yellow veil—and he remembered how he had walked in a circle, and how somebody had laughed. He wanted to kill that somebody. He drew his bayonet, so cautiously, so very cautiously. But he felt suddenly that he himself was that somebody, and so of course he could not kill him.

Then there were many years of stupefaction and horrible pains of hunger. He remembered how he had tried to bite off his swollen tongue ... for he was so hungry ... and how he could not do it. And then of course he had cried again, like a child, like a hysterical woman.

One day, sanity must have returned to him.

For he remembered finding himself in a little oasis. It was half buried by the desert sands. But there was a hole, partly filled with water. There were a few stunted trees. There were sun-dried dates, hard as stones.

He ate and ate and ate. He filled himself with water, until the moisture oozed from his pores. Then he slept for a long time.

The next day he filled his pockets with dates and his canteen with water. Somehow he had not lost the canteen while he was mad.

And he marched on.

It was a white day, clear as crystal, without a cloud, with a fierce blaze of pure light. He looked up at the sun and made a rude reckoning; he was going south, somewhere into the unknown lands. But he did not care.

Again, after a few days, he found a half-buried oasis, brackish water and wild figs. There was a narrow trail, a thin line as made by a single camel, and he followed it. Toward evening he picked up a blue neckerchief. It was half covered with sand. But the half which protruded had not yet faded to a streaked gray. He decided that it could not have been there more than a few days. Things bleach quickly in the desert sun.

Then, early one afternoon, wild joy surged in his heart. The yellow sands were melting into a great, grayish-green plain covered with low scrub and camel-grass. The ground showed signs of moisture. Towards night he was skirting the edges of a cork forest, and the next morning he saw a distant range of mountains, pink and lavender in the dawning light.

And the heart of Balloche, Apache, murderer, thief, and denyer of the Deity, was glad. Deep in his stunted, gray soul there was a certain feeling which he could not crystallize into words, not even into thoughts. Somehow it reminded him of a day, years ago, when he was a child. Back home, in the quarter of Saint Jean, a bigger boy had beaten him unmercifully, and a kind English lady had given him a shining silver franc-piece and a handful of sweets. He had been grateful to the lady.

But to whom should he be grateful because of the forest, the mountains, the water, the cooler air?

Balloche spat and shook his head. He cursed himself for a specimen of a fat-hearted, sentimental bourgeois. Which made him laugh out loud.

The harsh laugh sounded strange in the great, crushing loneliness. It sounded so strange that it frightened him. It made him feel as on that day in the Cannebière of Marseilles when he had killed the night watchman of the big jewelry store and he had imagined that the thud of the falling body would awaken the people in the house. He obeyed the natural impulse of a frightened man. He looked about him.

And there, not twenty feet away, was something in the grass.

It seemed to be alive, moving, feebly active. He took a firm hold on his rifle and advanced cautiously. He could see the glitter in the black eyes of the thing. It tried to slink away. But it did not seen able to. So Balloche took his courage in both hands and walked up to it. And then he laughed again. This time he laughed at his fears, a great, throaty laugh of relief.

For the thing in the grass was only a little girl, a child in years.

He stopped and had a good, long look. She was a Kabyle, judging from her reddish-brown skin and the blue tattoo marks on chin and forehead. Her dress was in shreds. She had lost her neckerchief. Her bluish-black hair was dusty and unkempt. Her soft skin was cut and scratched and bleeding. She seemed half starved—“ready to cash in,” he thought.

Balloche did not know what to do. If his best friend had told him that he, Balloche, the feared chief of the Saint Jean Apaches, was feeling pity and compassion for this stray whisp of brown humanity, he would have cursed him for a liar and followed up the insult with a kick and a knife-thrust. But, try as he would, he did not seem able to walk away and leave the child in her plight, as he would have done “in his sane moments,” as he called them.

He walked up close to her. He bent down and tried to put his hand on her forehead with a gesture of clumsy caress. And he jumped back three feet.

For the little thing, wounded and helpless and entirely pitiful, spat at him like a cornered wildcat and broke into a torrent of abuse in the Arabic. His knowledge of the language was limited to curt demands for food and drink and three or four bad words. But he knew instinctively that the child was not paying him any compliments. A few words had a familiar ring... “Giaour, ibn Kalb”... Infidel, Son of a Dog...

He grinned appreciatively. The little thing had spirit and aggressiveness, qualities he admired in man and woman. Again he approached her and bent down. But he withdrew hurriedly, with a howl of pain. She had quickly reached up and buried her sharp little teeth in his leg.

He sat down on the ground at a safe distance and looked at her.

“The devil—the damned devil...”

He tried to talk to her in French.

“Look here, ma belle, be reasonable, won't you? I'm not trying to hurt you... I am trying to help you... You...”

But the girl broke into another torrent of picturesque guttural abuse. For the first time in his life Balloche knew that he was silenced, utterly non-plussed.

She tried to rise, to move away. But a spasm of pain distorted her small features, and she lay still again.

Unconsciously Balloche had given up all thoughts of leaving her to her fate. He was aware of his strength, of course. He knew that it would be an easy matter for him to walk over and lift her up, if she wanted to or not, for all her abuse and her sharp little teeth. But he had a strange, stubborn idea that he wanted to gain her confidence, that he wanted those black eyes to lose their frightened, hateful expression.

He considered what to do. He looked at her in a puzzled way, and she returned the stare with interest.

Suddenly he grinned. He remembered past experiences with stray gutter-pups. He took a handful of dates from his pocket and opened his water-canteen. He began eating and drinking with relish, smacking his lips in a noisy, exaggerated manner.

He did not have to wait long for results. There came a look of overpowering desire into the black eyes of the little child, and then a pitiful moan. He paid no attention. He kept on with his meal. Then there was another half-suppressed sob, and a few broken words in the Arabic. But this time they did not sound like abuse. Balloche looked up and raised his eyebrows questioningly. She spoke rapidly and pointed at the food.

He grinned and threw her over a handful of dates. She ate ravenously. Then he thought that he could once more risk approaching her. He took the water-canteen, walked over to her, and knelt on the ground beside her. He slipped his left arm around her shoulders and helped her to sit up, holding the canteen to her cracked lips. She drank feverishly, with long, sucking pulls.

When she had finished her meal she looked at him with a faint, pathetic smile. He patted her cheek awkwardly, and she smiled again, a pretty, sunny smile which showed her white teeth. And somehow the smile seemed to warm his heart, his whole body. He could not understand it. It was all very strange and very foolish.

Then she pointed at her left leg. He examined it carefully, afraid of hurting her, looking at her every few seconds with a roughly kind word and a reassuring gesture. Her ankle was badly wrenched, and her arms and legs were scratched and cut by dagger-grass and camel-thorn. He massaged the swollen joint and tore his tunic into strips. Then he bandaged her as well as he could.

Suddenly the child reached up and threw her arms about his neck. She kissed him. And Balloche, the murderer, blushed.

He sat down on the ground, holding the little body in his arms, and so she fell into a gentle sleep, with her hands firmly clasped around his neck, with her face on his shoulder.

And Balloche thought of years gone by. He remembered how his mother had caressed him when he had hurt himself, and how she had sung him to sleep.

And so there was Balloche, the Apache, the pride of the quarter of Saint Jean, gently rocking the child in his arms and singing in a cracked voice :

“Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,
Dormesz-vous, dormez-vous?”

That evening, near a comfortable camp-fire of dry wood and thistles, the little girl told Balloche her story, with the help of many gestures and vivid play of hands and a few familiar Arabic words.

She and her father and mother had come from the north. They were poor Kabyles. They had only one dromedary between them. Then sickness had smitten them like a thunderbolt. First her father had died, then her mother. Then one night the camel had stumbled and broken a leg, and the jackals had attacked and devoured it. And she had lost her way. She had dragged her pained body through the pitiless sands, hungry, thirsty, suffering. Finally she had reached the edge of the forest. And now (she gave Balloche this to understand thoroughly) she was going to adopt him for good and he was never to leave her.

Balloche smiled. He caressed the child. He spoke to her in quick, metallic French which made her laugh. Every day he massaged the swollen ankle and washed and bandaged the wounds, until after a week she was fit to move.

So they trekked.

He did not know where he was going, and he did not care. He had forgotten Marseilles. He had forgotten the quarter of Saint Jean, the Battalion d'Afrique, the desertion from the colors. He was not afraid of the future. He was full of courage, full of a new, sweet, strange joy. Food and water were plentiful. He still had his rifle and some ammunition. He shot a bustard and a few sand-grouse. There was an abundance of wild dates and olives and of chirimoyos.

And so they walked on. Often he carried the little girl high on his shoulders, singing ruffianly soldier songs which delighted her. She could never hear enough of them.

With much exertion he taught her a few French words. He blushed with pleasure when she called him “Brother, big Brother” in pretty, lisping French. And the day on which she said to him:

“Je t'aime bien, mon gars,”

was one of the happiest days of his life.

Of course, child-like, she took up the play. She taught him many Arabic phrases, words of the harem, pretty terms of endearment. And she clapped her hands and kissed him when he called her in broken Arabic:

“Oh thou piece of my heart ... oh thou soul of a thousand roses ... thou fragrance of three lily petal ... thou breaker of many hearts...”

Once or twice they saw villages at a distance, villages of black felt tents, arranged in a quadrangle, protected by narrow, waterless ditches and by massive hedges of prickly-pear cactus and agave, matted together into great defensive barriers. But Balloche remembered his experience with the Berbers, and he left the villages to one side.

He kept on traveling South. He had a vague idea that somewhere there he would find a land which would welcome him ... him and the little girl. There was never a doubt of this quest in his heart. His past life seemed washed clean by the dry, clear heat of the desert days, the biting chill of the desert nights. He had even forgot Canichon le Mak', the young brother whom he had loved with a peculiar, brutal love. There was nobody in all the world but the little child—“Aziza” she said was her name.

One night he made his camp in a deep grove of wild olive and cedar trees. He slept soundly and peacefully, the little girl clasped tightly in his protecting arms.

He awakened with a start. He felt that somebody was looking at him. Instinctively his hands reached for his rifle. He looked up.

Yes. There was somebody standing near him. Immediately he recognized the dress, the white tunic and white trousers, the tall red fez upon the head, the red cross upon the breast. It was one of the “Frères Armés du Sahara,” the famed White Brothers of Algiers, the religious order of lay-brothers instituted by Cardinal Lavigerie.

His first thought was one of ridicule and contempt ... why ... the priest ... the monk...

It was true that these Brothers carried weapons and that they had been known to use them. But what of it?... He measured the lean, thin figure of the man, and then he looked at his own broad hands, his muscular arms...

And then he saw the little girl who was still sleeping quite soundly.

He remembered with a start what this stranger stood for. Why ... he was France ... he was law and order and retribution and justice and the court-rooms and jail ... and perhaps the guillotine. Suddenly he thought of the murdered sergeant back there in Tunis, the plundered commissary tent, the desertion from the colors...

This man stood for it all, all.

Suppose he killed him? They would follow him. They would hound him and stalk him. They would get him in the end, and they would show no mercy. Formerly he had boasted of his contempt for death. He had spat at the guillotine. But now ... there was that stray bit of humanity in his arms ... and he loved her...

The Brother still looked at him silently. His practised mind and eye could read that a terrible struggle was going on in the man's heart.

He sat down with a word of greeting and spoke.

He spoke long and gently. And suddenly it seemed to Balloche that the vaulted holiness of the confessional was about him. Suddenly it seemed to him that a greater force was in his soul, loosening his tongue, making him speak. He knew that he must speak the truth.

And so he did speak the truth...

It was a long, gray story of crime and vice and foul desire, of robberies and theft and murder.

Then he spoke of the last few weeks, of the child, of his great love for her, of his vague idea that somewhere he would find a haven of rest for himself and for her...

“Yes, mon père ... I thought in my madness that somewhere I would find a land that would welcome me ... a land where I could bury my sins ... my former life ... where I could live cleanly ... with her ... with this little gosse...”

And he pressed her savagely to his heart so that she awakened with a little cry of pain.

The Brother was silent for a while. Then he spoke very gently.

“Yes, my friend. Somewhere you will find it, this land which you are seeking ... somewhere in the South ... where I also am going ... to help, to comfort, to teach ... perhaps ... who knows? ... to convert... Come you with me ... you and the little one...”

And early the next morning the people of the village of Ouargla saw three strange figures disappearing on the horizon:

A White Brother of Algiers, a tall, broad-shouldered man, and between them, holding a hand of each of them, a little Arab girl.