The Sermon on the Fall of Rome

by Jérôme Ferrari

  “What man makes man destroys”

  In August, before she left for Algeria, Aurélie came to spend a couple of weeks at the village with the man who was still sharing her life and was quite astonished to encounter an upsurge of seething and chaotic vitality there that spilled over into everything, but manifestly had its source in her brother’s bar. A diverse and cheerful clientele was to be found there, a mixture of regulars, young people from the neighboring villages and tourists of all nationalities, amazingly brought together in a festive and bibulous communion which, against all expectations, was not troubled by any discord. It was as if this were the place chosen by God for an experiment in the reign of love upon earth and even the locals, normally so quick to complain of the slightest type of pollution, uppermost among which must be counted the very existence of their fellow human beings, wore the fixed and blissful smiles of the elect. Bernard Gratas, returned victorious from his season in hell, now seemed touched by the breath of the all-conquering Spirit. He had been the beneficiary of a lightning promotion that had propelled him straight from the purgatory of doing dishes to the manufacture of sandwiches, a task he performed with good humor and alacrity. Four waitresses moved back and forth across the main bar area and onto the terrace, graciously bearing dishes, behind the counter an older woman seated on a stool looked after the till, a young man who accompanied himself on the guitar sang Corsican, English, French and Italian songs, and when he embarked on a catchy tune, all the customers clapped along with enthusiasm. Matthieu and Libero devoted themselves to improving customer relations, moving from table to table to inquire after the wellbeing of their guests, taking repeat orders for rounds of drinks and tickling little children under the chin after treating them to an ice cream, and they were the masters of a perfect world, a blessed world, one that flowed with milk and honey. Even Claudie had to face facts and observed with a sigh,

  “Perhaps he was made for this,”

  she looked at her son radiating happiness as he moved from table to table, and said again,

  “It’s what makes him happy that counts, isn’t it?”

  and Aurélie had no desire to upset her by admitting that Matthieu infuriated her beyond belief and that she saw nothing more in his happiness than the triumph of a spoiled child, a snotty little brat, who by dint of tears and screams has finally obtained the toy he wanted. She watched him playing with his toy in front of a captive audience and flaunting his delight, and there was a real danger that the exasperation it provoked in her would be neither deep nor lasting, since it arose neither from disappointed love, nor even from anger, but was simply the prelude to a terminal form of indifference, the boy she had been so fond of and had so often comforted had slowly changed into a being with no breadth of interests, whose world was bounded by the horizon of his own trivial desires and Aurélie knew that, once she had got the measure of these, he would become a total stranger to her. Before going away she had come to take a fond farewell of her family, her grandfather in particular, and spend time with them. Every evening after dinner she witnessed Matthieu giving his performance, for it had apparently become obligatory to call in at the bar and have a drink there with the family, Matthieu would come and sit at their table, and talk about his plans for special events during the winter, the schemes he and Libero had devised for getting supplies of charcuterie, the accommodation for the waitresses, and the man who was sharing Aurélie’s life at that time, and would do so for several months more, seemed to find all this of great interest, asking pertinent questions, and offering his opinion, as if it were essential for him to win Matthieu’s affection, unless, as Aurélie was beginning to suspect, he was basically an idiot who was delighted to have encountered another idiot with whom he could feel at ease making idiotic remarks of all kinds. But at once she reproached herself for the unkindness of this attitude, the ease with which love was suddenly changing into contempt, and regretted having a churlish heart. She had nothing against bar managers, sandwiches and waitresses, and would not have passed any judgment on Matthieu’s choices if she had believed them to be sincere and considered, but she had no time either for play-acting or denial and Matthieu was behaving as if he must cut himself off from his past, he spoke with a contrived accent that had never been his own, an accent all the more ludicrous because on occasion he would lose it halfway through a sentence before blushing and correcting himself, to pick up the thread of the grotesque drama of his assumed identity from which the slightest idea, the tiniest evidence of intellect were excluded as dangerous elements. And Libero himself, whom Aurélie had always regarded as a thoughtful and intelligent boy, seemed resolved to follow the same path, being content to respond with a vaguely interrogative onomatopoeic noise when she told him she was going to spend the following year between the University of Algiers and Annaba, where she would be taking part in excavations on the site of Hippo with a team of French and Algerian archaeologists, as if the Saint Augustine, to whose writings he had just devoted a year of his life, were not worth a further second of his attention. Aurélie had given up talking to them about anything that really mattered to her and every evening, when she had reached the limit of what she could endure by way of singing, laughter and nonsense, she would get up from the table and say to her grandfather,

  “Shall we go for a little stroll?”

  and, to make it clear,

  “Just the two of us?”

  in case it had occurred to anybody else to join them, and they would walk together along the road leading up toward the mountain, Marcel took his granddaughter’s arm, they left the sounds of merriment and the lights behind them, and sat down for a moment beside the fountain under the vast, starry August night sky. It was the first time Aurélie had been invited to join an international cooperative project and she was eager to start work. Her parents were concerned about her safety. The man who was sharing her life at that time was concerned about the durability of their relationship. Matthieu was concerned about nothing. Her grandfather viewed her as an enchantress, single-handedly capable of hoisting up vanished worlds from the abysses of dust and oblivion that had engulfed them and, in her moments of enthusiasm, when she had just embarked on her studies, that had been how she dreamed of herself. She had since become humbler and more serious. She knew that life cannot exist far from human eyes and strove to be one of those pairs of eyes that save life from extinction. But her churlish heart sometimes whispered to her that this was not true, all she brought into the light was dead things, she breathed no life into them, on the contrary, it was her own life that was slowly allowing itself to be invaded through and through by death, and Aurélie huddled close to her grandfather in the darkness. When the time came for her to leave she embraced him with all her might, then embraced all the rest of her family, trying to be even-handed in her affection. Matthieu said to her,

  “Well, don’t you think it’s good, what we’ve managed to do?”

  seeking her approval with such childish insistence that she could only answer him,

  “Yes, it’s very good. I’m very happy for you,”

  and gave him another kiss. She returned to Paris with the man who was sharing her life at that time and a few days later he went with her to Orly airport where once again, as the day dawned, and after a night of love which he had wanted to be intense and solemn, there were embraces and kisses which Aurélie gave and received as well as she could. The Air France plane was almost empty. Aurélie tried to read but could not manage to do so. She could not sleep either. The sky was cloudless. When the plane flew over the Balearic Islands Aurélie pressed her face against the window and stared at the sea until the African coast appeared. At Algiers the men from national security, armed with automatic rifles, were waiting on the pavement where the aircraft came to a standstill. She stepped down from the gangway trying not to look at them and climbed into a creaking bus that took her to the terminal. Indescribable chaos reigned at the border police controls. Three or four flights must have landed at the same time,
including a Boeing 747 that had arrived from Montreal nine hours late, and the police were examining every passport offered to them with extreme care, losing themselves in protracted and melancholy contemplation of the visa before resigning themselves to awarding it a desultory impress from the liberating rubber stamp. When, after an hour, she reached the baggage reclaim point, she found all the luggage scattered here and there in the hall on a floor covered in cigarette stubs and was afraid she would not find hers. She had to show her stamped passport again, smile at impassive customs officers and pass through electronic gates before finding herself in the arrivals hall. Behind barriers a crowd of people were pressed together, watching the entrance. Aurélie’s heart was thumping nervously, she had never felt so lost and alone, she longed to go back home at once and when she read her name written in capital letters on a sheet of paper being waved by an unknown hand, she had such a violent sense of relief that she found it hard to keep herself from weeping.

  Libero had had no intention of making the same mistakes as his hapless predecessors. He knew he was as lacking in expertise as Matthieu when it came to managing a bar but was confident that his local knowledge and a minimum of common sense would enable them to avoid another debacle. He spoke of the future like a visionary and Matthieu listened to him as if his were the voice of prophetic truth. They would have to moderate their ambitions, without abandoning them completely, there was no question of their offering a full restaurant service, that was hard labor and financially a bottomless pit, but they would offer their customers light meals, especially in summer, something simple, charcuterie, cheeses, maybe salads as well, without skimping on quality, people were prepared to pay for quality, that Libero was sure of, but as they must resign themselves to living in an age of mass tourism and give an equal welcome to hordes of people who were strapped for cash, there was no question of limiting themselves to luxury foods, they must also be prepared to serve crap at dirt-cheap prices and Libero knew how to resolve this formidable equation. His brother, Sauveur, and Virgile Ordioni would supply them with the best quality ham, cured over three years, and cheeses, really exceptional things, so very exceptional that anyone who tasted them would reach for his wallet weeping tears of gratitude, and, as for the rest, no point in burdening themselves with second-rate products, the trash that supermarkets sold in their local produce sections, packaged in rustic string bags decorated with a moor’s head and perfumed in a factory with chestnut flour, much better quite frankly to go cheap with no frills and serve Chinese pork carved in Slovakia that you could hawk for next to nothing, but beware of treating people like idiots, you need to lay your cards on the table and present things so they understand the price differentials and don’t get the impression they’re being ripped off, the crap is a bargain, for quality you pay through the nose, honesty was absolutely essential in this, not only because it was an admirable virtue in itself but, above all, because it more or less fulfilled the function of a lubricant, the platters for sampling must be prepared in such a way that the customers can get an idea, taste it first and then you take an order afterward, no, please try another piece, just to be sure, and this scrupulous honesty will be all the more rewarded because, whatever the final choice, the profit margins would be very much the same, they were going to swindle them all, all these suckers, poor and rich alike, irrespective of age or nationality, but swindle them openly, while at the same time pampering them, the manager of a bar must look after his customers, he couldn’t spend all his time stuck there behind his till, like that halfwit Gratas, he must be on hand, pleasant, eager to please, so the crucial problem to be resolved was therefore one of waitresses. One evening Vincent Leandri took them to meet a friend who had managed various businesses on the mainland and now ran a bar down on the coast, it was smart and discreet although it could have earned him immediate conviction for aggravated procuring as Matthieu and Libero were quick to realize. He welcomed them with open arms and regaled them with champagne.

  “You need someone reliable. And who knows about music.”

  He made a phone call and told them that Annie, an experienced waitress, who had worked for him in the past, might be interested. She arrived a quarter of an hour later, declared that Matthieu and Libero were sweet, drank almost a pint of champagne and assured them that she would be delighted to give them a hand. She would look after the till and manage the stock. For service in the main bar area they would need to find another waitress. Vincent’s friend shook his head.

  “Not one. One’s not enough. You need three or four.”

  Libero pointed out that the bar was not very big, they didn’t need so many girls and he didn’t see how they could find the money to pay them. But Vincent’s friend insisted.

  “It’s the summer. If you’re not a couple of dopes you’ll get a big crowd. If you want to stay open throughout the day as well as in the evening you’ll need staff members to do shifts. You can’t make the same girl work eighteen hours a day, can you? And if it costs too much you could fire a couple of them. But then you’ll be the ones that have to get up in the morning. In the evening you need girls. Two guys isn’t good for trade. I know there are lots of fags around, but you’re not planning on opening a gay club, are you?”

  He gave a hearty, coarse laugh. Libero was on the point of replying that he had no more intention of opening a gay club than a strip joint but he was afraid of upsetting him.

  “You get my meaning?”

  Libero nodded.

  “And whatever you do, don’t screw the waitresses. Got it? People don’t come to spend their dough at your place and watch you screwing the waitresses. You can screw the customers, but not the waitresses.”

  Annie agreed wholeheartedly, you could allow yourself to do lots of things in life, but if you were managing a bar you should never, absolutely never, screw the waitresses. Matthieu and Libero assured her that such an appalling notion had never crossed their minds.