31

Calque, who was driving, and not relishing his silent passengers, turned up the volume on the radio. ‘Listen to this.’

An announcer was describing the previous night’s mayhem at Alabama Mama’s.

Sabir, who was trying to get some sleep after yet another disturbed night, groaned. Lamia, who had somehow managed to curl up and fall asleep on the back seat, didn’t respond.

‘Look what we’ve been missing. We’ve been staying in the wrong part of town, apparently. A gang attack. Two groups of Hells Angels tearing into each other. Fourteen people taken to hospital. Redneck heaven.’

Sabir straightened up. He knew he wasn’t going to get any sleep from here on in. ‘What do you know about rednecks, Calque?’

Calque hitched his chin. ‘I know a lot about rednecks. The Polish man at the motel even told me two redneck jokes.’

Sabir pretended to reel backwards. ‘But you can’t even speak English. How could you possibly communicate with him?’

‘It is simple. He is a Pole. A civilized man. A European. He speaks French.’

Sabir sighed. ‘Can you remember them? The jokes, I mean.’

Calque appeared to be deep in thought. ‘Yes. I think so.’

‘Well tell me them, then. If I can’t sleep, I might as well be entertained.’

Calque pursed his lips, his eyes furrowed against the morning sunlight. ‘The first one goes like this. A redneck from Alabama dies. But fortunately he has left a will. In it he leaves his entire estate in trust for his widow. The only snag is, she can only inherit when she reaches the age of fourteen.’

Sabir stared at him. ‘That’s it?’

Calque shrugged. ‘I thought it was very funny. I laughed when the Polish man told it to me. The other one is better, though. Much better.’

‘Okay, shoot.’

‘There you go again with this silly expression. Why should I shoot? It simply doesn’t translate into French. When you speak French, you should use the French idiom. Not an American one.’

Sabir turned down the radio, which was still blaring the local news at them. ‘I would very much like to hear the second joke, Captain Calque.’

Calque nodded. ‘Very well. I shall give it to you. This is even funnier than the first one.’

Sabir squeezed shut his eyes.

‘Two rednecks from Alabama are approaching each other on the road. One has a sackful of chickens in his hand. The second redneck says, “If I can tell you how many chickens you have in your sack, will you give them to me?” The first redneck thinks things over. “If you can guess how many chickens are in this sack, I will give you both of them.” The second redneck stares down at the sack. “Five?”’

Lamia gave a hoot from the back of the car. Even Sabir had the grace to laugh.

‘You see,’ said Calque. ‘I told you the second joke was better. In France we tell such jokes about you Yankees.’

‘Yeah, well, that doesn’t surprise me in the least,’ said Sabir. ‘We Yankees tell such jokes against you French. I learned dozens of them when I was in the National Guard.’

Calque pointed his finger in Sabir’s direction. ‘You are half French. Don’t forget that, Sabir. You owe a duty to your maternal homeland.’ He was beginning to look slightly nervous.

‘How can I ever forget it? That’s why I was the butt of the damned Frenchy jokes in the first place. However, I figure that any man who can’t tell a good joke against himself doesn’t deserve the claim to a sense of humour. Don’t you agree?’

‘Go on,’ said Lamia from the back of the car. ‘Tell us an anti-French joke.’

‘You sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘Okay. How many Frenchmen does it take to screw in a light bulb?’

There was silence in the car.

‘One. He holds it, and the rest of Europe simply revolves around him.’

Calque took both hands off the wheel and made a disparaging motion. ‘That is not very funny at all.’

‘Okay. Try this then.’ Sabir took a preparatory breath. He was beginning to feel a sense of impending doom. Still, for some reason he couldn’t quite figure, he felt unable to stop himself. ‘How do you confuse a French soldier?’

‘How?’

‘You give him a rifle and ask him to fire it.’

Calque slammed the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. ‘That is outrageous. Did they really tell such jokes as this against you when you were in the army?’

‘I wasn’t in the army. I was in the National Guard.’

‘The National Guard, then. Pah.’

Sabir’s jaw was beginning to freeze with the tension of his unwanted position. ‘Yes. All the time. Comes from having a foreign-sounding name. The true joke was really on them, because my father was pretty near 100 per cent pure American – it was my mother who was French.’

‘Tell me another joke. One about women this time.’ Lamia was sitting up straighter in the back of the car.

‘It’ll be about soldiers. Those are the only ones I know.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘What do female snipers in France use as camouflage?’

More silence.

‘Their armpits.’

‘Their what?’

‘Their armpits.’ Sabir knew for certain that he’d gone too far this time.

‘What does that mean?’ Lamia was leaning towards him from the back of the car. ‘I don’t understand that joke. How can a woman use her armpits for camouflage? And anyway, we don’t have female snipers in the French army. Women are not allowed to engage in combat.’

‘It’s a joke. It’s not meant to be taken seriously. Like the movies, jokes rely on a willing suspension of disbelief.’

Calque turned towards Lamia. ‘Sabir is trying to tell us that the Yankees think French women never shave their armpits.’

Lamia’s mouth dropped open in horror. ‘Where did you see this, Adam? Where did you see French women not shaving themselves?’

Sabir was tempted to say ‘Oh boy’, but didn’t. ‘It’s not me who’s saying this, Lamia. It’s the joke. It’s an archetype. Yanks during the war simply found that French women didn’t shave.’

‘How could one shave during the war? There were no razors.’

‘Good point. Great point. That answers it then.’

‘But that is unfair. How can you blame French women for what happened during the war, when there were shortages, and when it was impossible to shave themselves?’

‘Jesus Christ, people. We’re meant to be having fun here. Cracking a few jokes. Having a laugh.’

‘But you are not being serious, Sabir. For a joke to be funny, it should be based on truth.’

Sabir grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled it over his head like a cowl. ‘If the Corpus comes to get us, don’t bother to call me. I’m fine just as I am.’