The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, стр. 47

That time was gone: he could no longer go to her in the night, walking softly along the empty corridors at the Hotel d’État; she no longer waited for him to come with a pounding heart. The moments they now spent together were heavy with the weight of other people’s stares. From time to time they went to spend the day at Tipasa, to get away from Algiers. They stopped for a meal at Bou-Haroun, the purplish fish innards on the stones of the quayside were boiling in the sun and the slightest breeze drove a miasma of decay toward the restaurant terraces, but they went on eating and refilled their glasses with red wine served in Coca-Cola bottles. In the afternoon they would walk around the site together, occasionally stepping on a used contraceptive left behind by a couple who, like them, had no bedroom as a haven for their embraces, but they did not seek to emulate these al fresco raptures, for something that might have passed for a blissful act of transgression by lovers became here nothing more than the mark of sordid necessity. The month of August had just ended, a month of scorching heat, fish innards and humidity, a month without love. Aurélie understood that there was only one place where she could live out her relationship with Massinissa in freedom and that place was neither France nor Algeria, it was located in time, not space, and did not lie within the limits of this world. It was a part of the fifth century that lived on in the collapsed stones of Hippo, where Augustine’s shade still celebrated the secret weddings of those who were dear to him and could not achieve union anywhere else. Aurélie was sad, she had never been one whose passions were swiftly aroused, sentimentality appalled her, but she would dearly have loved to know where this affair might lead her. She was ready to accept all setbacks, provided they were to herself and she found it particularly painful to have to give in to the harsh reality of facts that corresponded to no one’s intention. For she had no other choice but to give in. Once more the frontier of a transparent glass wall arose around her which she still had not the power either to pass through or to break down, although this might now be her dearest wish. Massinissa would take her out to eat kebabs with him in the Draria district, they would sit down in the family room of a working-class restaurant, where the service was much too fast and efficient and the meal did not last more than a quarter of an hour, which they tried to prolong by drinking their mint tea as slowly as possible, and Massinissa would pay, and they would drive around in Algiers, at the road blocks the police checked their papers, looked them up and down with a mocking air and he drove her back to the hotel where he could not follow her. She wanted to give him a treat and invited him to the Chinese restaurant at the Hotel El Djazaïr. It was an appalling evening. Aurélie decided not to send back the third bottle of corked Médéa. Massinissa, petrified at first, was now darting furious looks at the waiter as he set down their chicken spring rolls in front of them, wearing a most unpleasant, enigmatic grin, Massinissa was convinced he was mocking him, and only addressing him as “Monsieur” with such emphasis to make him feel that, despite the presence of the Frenchwoman, he was a mere peasant. He was getting angrier and angrier,

“You don’t know these bastards and their contempt. That flunkey, he’s so damned pleased with himself,”

he did not touch the food on his plate and in the end Aurélie called for the bill, which she paid with her credit card. The waiter presented her with the voucher for her to sign, while grinning at Massinissa who grabbed hold of his waistcoat discreetly and said something to him in Arabic. The waiter’s grin vanished. They went back to their car. Massinissa went on brooding bitterly.

“I couldn’t afford to take you to a restaurant like that. Entrées costing five hundred dinars. And those are not places for me, in any case.”

Aurélie understood him. She squeezed up against him in the car. She managed to persuade him to let her pay for a room for him in the same hotel as herself, so that they could spend a night together, they would pretend not to know one another, he would come to her room silently, as at Annaba, but she could clearly see that he felt deeply ashamed of his situation as a kept man and felt this shame affecting his desire at the very moment when he took her in his arms. After two days Massinissa returned to his parents’ home. That was how it was. The dig was finished, they had slowly returned to their respective worlds and they were reaching out to one another across an abyss that nothing could bridge. It is an illusion to believe that one can choose one’s native land. Aurélie had no links with this country, apart from the blood her grandfather, André Degorce, had caused to flow there and the elusive remains of an old bishop, dead many centuries before. She brought the date of her departure forward and packed her bags without saying anything to Massinissa. What