The Prefect
Lilia Mahfouz (Non-fiction)
In France, the préfet is the only senior government official whose office is enshrined in the Constitution. He is appointed personally by the President of the Republic. Which is to say, Raoul Wolf was no ordinary man.
The trouble was that Raoul had spent so much of his life obsessed with hierarchy that he no longer knew how to look at people any other way. He categorised everyone instinctively: those who mattered, those who didn't, those he could despise, and those he could use. The habit survived long after retirement, all the way to the final stretch of his life, when a nasal cannula tethered him to an oxygen tank.
I might as well admit it right away: I probably belonged somewhere among the people he despised, and very much among the people he used. I was forever handing him his cane, his pill organizer, fetching his glasses, a glass of water, a box of tissues. He'd send me to the bakery in the next village for the olive bread he loved, then I'd drive him to the fitness trail in the nearby woods. While he crept along with his cane at the speed of a snail, I half-jogged beside him awkwardly, lugging his oxygen tank. By the time we got home, my back was killing me.
And no, I wasn't Raoul Wolf's caregiver.
He was my mother-in-law's third husband, whom she'd married late in life. They had first met back in the sixties. Unfortunately, he was already married with two children. Thirty years later, now widowed, Raoul Wolf reappeared. The old sweethearts quietly picked up where they'd left off and finally got married.
The first time we met, Raoul had the exquisite tact to point out that my skin reminded him of Morocco.
I told him I was from Tunisia.
He stared off into the distance.
‘The best couscous I ever had was in Morocco...’
By then his health had declined, and every summer Raoul moved into my mother-in-law's country house. We now had to share the place. Ray still worked in Paris and only came home in the evenings. As soon as my young daughter went down for her afternoon nap, I found myself drafted, against my will, into the unpaid position of personal attendant to Prefect Raoul Wolf.
Our painfully slow walks along the forest fitness trail had one redeeming quality: they gave me the chance to listen to his rambling memories of the colonial years.
‘I was near Meknes. A big white house surrounded by oleanders. There was the flagpole with the French flag. The servants' quarters. Everything immaculate. Everything in its proper place. Djamel, the gardener. And Khadija, the most wonderful cook. Ah... Khadija's couscous! Do you know how to make couscous?’
‘Well... I know how to make Tunisian couscous.’
‘Maybe one day you'll make me a couscous.’
‘ You know, I know your country very well.’
‘Tunisia?’
‘Morocco. I spent three years there. During the war. Three wonderful years. I went everywhere with my driver, Mehdi. A black Citroën Traction Avant. Beautiful car. I was welcomed into schools, douars, farms. Everyone came through my office, the pasha, the caïds, the French settlers. My native secretary typed all my reports. Visitors were admitted only two at a time. The others waited outside. People understood respect back then. Order. The dignity of the State. Everything meant something.’
I'd often wondered what important position Raoul Wolf could possibly have held during those troubled years in a French protectorate governed by a regime that had collaborated with Nazi Germany.
I let him ramble. Every now and then, a few fragments of truth surfaced. From time to time, I'd encourage him.
‘Sounds like something out of a novel.’
‘You have no idea. With all the reports I wrote on the tribes, the economy, the local notables... I could publish a fascinating book. Extremely educational.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. I met with the caïds, the settlers. Everyone came to me for arbitration. They addressed me with the greatest respect: 'Monsieur le Contrôleur Civil...'
‘Then write it. You obviously want to.’
‘Oh no. I can't work on two books at once.’
‘You're writing another one?’
‘I started it two years ago. A monumental undertaking. Painfully slow going. I'm putting together all my postwar memories.’
Raoul Wolf caught his foot on a tree root, swayed from side to side, then finally regained his balance. He let out a small grunt of irritation. I looked away.
‘So you're writing your memoirs...’
‘Memoirs where one man's story intertwines with History itself. The destiny of a man and the destiny of a nation. Oh, look! A squirrel!’
‘Where?’
‘You missed it. It disappeared into that tree. Nothing but oaks around here. In Morocco I lived among the most magnificent cedar forests. Do you know the town of Azrou?’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘You really should know your own country better.’
‘I was born in Tunisia.’
‘Morocco is a beautiful country. The food is extraordinary. That's where you'll find the finest couscous. I'd love for you to make me a couscous.’
‘When you talk about History with a capital H in your memoirs...’
‘Oh, now that's something I know a thing or two about. You're probably too young to remember. Ever heard of the Observatory Affair?’
‘The attempt on François Mitterrand's life, back in the sixties?’
‘1959! Some people claimed the whole thing had been staged. No one ever found out the truth. I did. I know what really happened. Don't forget, I was prefect back then. I had access to the highest circles of power. One day, when my memoirs are published...’
Raoul Wolf never finished the sentence. A violent coughing fit cut him off. He stopped to catch his breath, and I seized the opportunity to lower the oxygen tank to the ground. My hands were on fire.
As he stood there wheezing, his face flushed from the effort, I couldn't help thinking how astonishingly ugly he was. Tall. Heavy. He looked like an aging ogre with shaggy eyebrows and a thick, unruly shock of white hair. I'd have wagered that even in his glory days he'd been an intimidating sight, all sheer bulk, oversized head, and that enormous misshapen nose. His expression was impossible to read. One of his eyes wandered.
‘Take me back to the car. I'm tired. Besides, it's almost dinner time.’
Raoul always ate early, rarely with the rest of us. He had a mountain of medication to take.
We turned around.
A crow drifted between the trees. Raoul seemed lost somewhere else.
‘What are you thinking about, Raoul?’
‘What am I thinking about? Khadija's couscous. That's where I am. I can still taste it. Be a dear... make me a couscous.’
He seemed determined to make me recreate that memory for him. In his mind, I possessed that power.
‘You know, couscous takes hours to make. Besides, I don't even know which spices go into Moroccan couscous.’
‘Khadija used a spice blend from over there. Nothing complicated. Spices are easy enough to find. Be a dear... make me a couscous.’
I explained it to him as patiently as if I were talking to a child.
‘Listen, Raoul. You're going to be disappointed. There's no way around it. You'll compare mine to the one Khadija made all those years ago. My couscous will never live up to that memory. And you'll blame me for it.’
Raoul instantly changed tactics.
‘You can see I'm not in very good health. Surely you can try to make an old man happy.’
I couldn't help thinking that people like him, once they could no longer give orders, knew exactly how to make themselves impossible to refuse.
I soaked the chickpeas overnight. I peeled the carrots, turnips, zucchini, celery and cardoons.
I chopped onions until my eyes filled with tears. I sautéed them. I added fresh tomatoes, tomato paste and olive oil. I was generous with the cumin, caraway, ginger and crushed garlic. I dropped in a cinnamon stick and a clove. I covered the vegetables with spring water and watched each one carefully as it cooked.
I cooked the chickpeas separately so I could peel every single one by hand. It was painstaking work, and by the end I was exhausted. It seemed worth it for an old man whose digestion had become so fragile.
Then I made my mother's meatballs: ground beef, flat-leaf parsley, potatoes, cheese, garlic and spices. I chopped. Minced. Mashed. Grated. Kneaded. Rolled the meatballs. Fried them.
Then slipped them into the couscous broth for the last five minutes.
Before dinner, I cleaned the entire kitchen until everything was back in its place.
Raoul Wolf ate noisily, one forkful after another, without saying a word. Every so often his face tightened into a faint grimace. Finally I broke the silence.
‘I made my mother's couscous for you.’
He muttered through clenched teeth.
‘Yes... yes...’
‘It's different from Moroccan couscous.’
‘Different? It's nothing like it.’
‘Of course not. The vegetables here don't taste like the vegetables over there.’
He grumbled again.
‘It's nothing like it. Not even close.’
‘So... you're disappointed?’
He let out a weary sigh.
‘I don't understand why you didn't try harder.’
‘I peeled every single chickpea for you.’
‘I couldn't care less about the chickpeas! It doesn't taste the same. That's all.’
‘I warned you. No one can recreate Khadija's couscous. I knew you'd be disappointed.’
He grumbled one last time.
‘Well... never mind.’
He retreated into silence. When he left the table, he didn't even say thank you.
After dinner, I cleaned the entire kitchen all over again.
The following evening, I walked into the dining room wearing a new navy skirt suit I'd bought at a fashionable Paris boutique. The designer had based the entire collection on the military-inspired jackets Michael Jackson used to wear. Mine had epaulettes, silver frogging across the front, and a decorative military medal pinned to the lapel.
The moment Raoul Wolf saw it, his face turned crimson.
‘What on earth is that? Would you look at that! A fake military medal! What incredible disrespect! That's outrageous! Take it off immediately! Why would you pin something like that on your jacket? Why?’
I smiled at him warmly.
‘Because I earned it! ‘
About the Author
Lilia Mahfouz is a French author based in Paris. A laureate of the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Writing Prize, her fiction has appeared in French literary journals, as well as in a wide range of American and British literary magazines.