Time Is a Killer

by Michel Bussi

  Clotilde gripped Natale’s hand.

  ‘Take me to the boat.’

  Natale stared at her and smiled. Without a word, he rolled his trousers up above the knee. Then he led her through the darkness, as if he knew by heart each undulation in the sand, each rock that they climbed, and suddenly, before plunging into the water, he lifted her in his arms, trying to keep her dry for those last few metres that separated them from the boat.

  By the time he set Clotilde down in the Aryon, like a cargo of dynamite that must not, under any circumstances, be allowed to get wet, the water had reached his chest, and even though he had held his cargo tightly in his arms, they were both as soaked as each other as they dropped into the hull. Lying there, the boat’s sides shielded them completely from the dancers on the beach.

  The sea wind chilled them.

  Clotilde felt intoxicated. She had a sense that she was living out the final moments of a long nightmare and that, in a few hours, the truth would finally emerge. Perhaps, however stupid it might seem, that idiot Cervone might finally confess that her mother was still alive, that she had been waiting for her all these years.

  One last time, Clotilde glanced at her mute mobile phone, before sliding her wet shorts down her legs like a snake sloughing its skin. She was much worse at striptease than Maria-Chjara, she realised. She made up for it with self-mockery.

  ‘So, did you find our beautiful Italian arousing at all?’

  With the same reptilian wriggle, Natale removed his shorts. His polo shirt, which he had already pulled over his head, had been used to sponge his body before being draped carefully over the rail.

  ‘Hm … molto molto,’ said Natale. ‘And if you could go on calling me Brad …’

  ‘No way! For me, you are and will remain Jean-Marc. More than that, my Jean-Marc in his unique role as the dolphin man.’

  They lay down side by side without another word, silently shedding their underwear. Clotilde, pressing her cold, wet body against Natale’s, understood that they would have to make love like that, side by side. She imagined that if they ever made love again they would always have to do it like that, as sardines (the image made her smile), and find even more unlikely places – in a grassy field beside a busy road; on the top bunk, right under the ceiling, of a sleeper train on the way to Venice; under the stage of a theatre with the performance going on above them …

  The boat rocked gently.

  So did her life.

  ~

  ‘What if we loosened the moorings?’

  Clotilde and Natale were lying in the bottom of the Aryon, naked, on their backs; swaying in a cradle beneath the stars. Clotilde could no longer recognise Betelgeuse among the myriad points of light.

  ‘What if we loosened the moorings?’ Clotilde repeated.

  The Aryon was held only by a single rope. A pen-knife, teeth, a sharp fingernail would have been enough to sever their bond with the land.

  In the distance, the cathedral-like silence was broken by an unaccompanied Maria-Chjara singing ‘Sempre giovanu’. Clotilde had tried to wait for that song before uniting her body with Natale’s, imagining that their pleasure would be all the more intense; summoning all her patience while she waited for that moment, the fantasy of her adolescence, the fantasy of a lifetime for over thirty years. She hadn’t succeeded. She hadn’t been able to hold out for more than a few minutes, and had come during the chorus of ‘Joe le taxi’.

  All that for that.

  What if they loosened the moorings? Clotilde repeated again and again, this time in her head.

  Natale hadn’t answered her question.

  Clotilde wasn’t going to ask again.

  They lay there in silence, waiting for a shooting star, losing all track of time.

  Or at least Clotilde did.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Clo.’

  The stars danced as if some mischievous god was trying to mix them up.

  ‘Home?’

  ‘My wife gets off duty at midnight. I’ve got to be back before Aurélia comes home.’

  Find Betelgeuse among the jumbled stars, the Little Prince’s asteroid, any star that might have inspired love since the dawn of time.

  ‘Why, Natale?’

  The boat rocked again, but this time it was because Natale was looking for his boxers and his belt, like a lover who was still drunk in the early morning.

  ‘Why have you stayed with her all these years? With a woman like her?’

  He smiled at her, a smile that meant ‘You really want to know?’; a smile that she did not refuse.

  ‘Even if you find it hard to acknowledge, Clo, Aurélia has made a huge effort to be with me. To accompany me on my life, to arrange it, to bring some order to it. Aurélia is organised, she’s attentive, honest, straight, reliable, reassuring, present, loving …’

  Clotilde tried to burn out her retinas by staring at the most dazzling of the stars. She didn’t try to control her tone of voice, which was shrill, like the harsh scrape of metal on metal.

  ‘Fine, I see, I believe you.’

  She forced herself to relax slightly, to sound more serious, before she went on.

  ‘But that doesn’t change my question, Natale. Nothing you can tell me about Aurélia changes a thing, because I know you don’t love her.’

  ‘So what, Clo? So what?’

  ~

  Go … Go and see, my love …4

  ~

  Natale had left. Clotilde had been dressed for several minutes when a message arrived on her phone.

  Franck.

  All fine.

  We’ll be back in a few days as planned.

  You mean a lot to me.

  The words she had exchanged with Natale still clashed, mirroring her own life.

  I know you don’t love her.

  So what?

  4 Dialogue from the film, The Big Blue, directed by Luc Besson, © 1988, Gaumont.

  47

  Wednesday, 23 August 1989, seventeenth day of the holidays

  Seaweed-blue sky

  It’s the big day!

  I’ve been talking to you about 23 August for quite some time, my reader of yesterday and tomorrow, and now here we are.

  Saint Rose: the morning of tenderness, the evening of promise, the night of caresses.

  Day P for Popped Cherry for my twit of a brother Nicolas, I don’t need to remind you. Day W, Wednesday, for White Lies for Maman and Papa, who will exchange them on their anniversary, who will swear they still love each other, that love exists, yes of course it does, isn’t love what puts the presents beside the fireplace, among the cold and crumpled sheets, when the lovers have gone to sleep? Love is the grown-ups’ version of Father Christmas.

  But I don’t care. I still believe in it!

  When I was little and my friends swore in the playground that Father Christmas didn’t exist, I refused to listen.

  One day, perhaps a lover who leaves me will swear that love doesn’t exist, and I will put my fingers in my ears.

  I swear that I believe in Father Christmas, in people who live in the stars, in unicorns, mermaids and dolphins that can talk to humans.

  Natale believes in that too.

  I’m running towards him.

  I’m meeting him in the Port of Stareso to tell him that I have cajoled, charmed, and flattered Papé Cassanu, the big oak of Arcanu, the bear of the Balagne, the hawk of Capu di a Veta, the guardian of Revellata, and that he’s going to say yes to the plan for a dolphin sanctuary at Oscelluccia beach. Then Natale will owe me more than a kiss, he’ll owe me a kiss every day, and trips on the Aryon, endless swimming with Idril and Orophin, and a whole series of other promises for when I’m older and have stopped believing in Father Christmas but still believe in love.

  I’m following the path along the crest of the Revellata Peninsula, then I’ll climb down to the Port of Stareso in the north-east, towards Punta Rossa, with the Revellata lighthouse straight in front of me. It’s the highest and narrowest part of the peninsula
, you look out over the sea on all sides. If I were to pee here, just by my feet, I wouldn’t be able to guess which side of the sea my little jet would flow down into. To the west, over the top of the cliff like a waterfall, or to the east, towards the beach, as a stream?

  Just thinking about it slows me down. As it does every time, the sight of this amazing view. Wondering what giant palette could have produced all the shades of red on the peninsula and the turquoise in the water. Is God a bearded painter who created the world with three brushes and an easel? I like that thought. I stare at the houses peeping out between the rocks in the Port of Stareso; they’re built into the cliff like caves, but a cubed version. Down at the doll-sized jetty, there’s no sign of the Aryon.

  This time I stop, I concentrate on the sea, empty but for a ferry as yellow as a scrap of sun. I hesitate. I tell myself that the best thing to do would be to stay here, up on La Revellata, in the blazing sun, in the battering wind, and look out towards the horizon. Natale’s boat will have to come back to port. I just have to pull my Bon Jovi cap over my ears, put on my dark glasses and sit on a rock.

  ‘Waiting for your boyfriend?’

  The voice behind me made me start.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Your boyfriend! The old man.’

  The voice belongs to Cervone Spinello, and I realise that the bastard has been spying on me, that he knows all about Natale. Unless his father, Basile, has been shooting his mouth off. I’d be surprised.

  ‘My boyfriend? That’s rubbish! It’s strictly business between me and Natale Angeli.’

  ‘I hope so for your sake. Because Angeli likes them old.’

  I can’t even be bothered to defend myself in front of this fool. His eye is fixed on Recisa cove, the bay to the south of La Revellata that is colonised by wind-surfers. It’s the best spot in the Balagne according to the guys in wetsuits who sometimes crowd into the shower block at the Euproctes.

  ‘Listen,’ Cervone goes on. ‘I understand Angeli. The older women are the ones with the money. You see that inlet down there, the one that the sailing boats leave from? That’s where I’m going to set up shop as soon as I can.’

  He’s right, the bastard. Out at sea, the dance of the windsurfers is crazy, a mad ballet of coloured wings. On the other hand, I don’t see where that dimwit Cervone could set up shop, Recisa Bay is all rocks and stones, more soil than sand, battered by the wind and the shifting dunes.

  I continue to gaze out from the peninsula, from one sea to the other, still waiting for the return of the Aryon.

  ‘There’s nothing on Recisa beach.’

  ‘Exactly. I’m going to open a beach bar there. With parasols so that you can read in the shade and games for children.’

  I must have looked at him oddly. I didn’t think reading and kids were really Cervone’s thing.

  ‘You think you can make money like that?’

  ‘Who’s talking about money? It’s just a mega-way of chatting up girls.’

  And off he goes with his ideas. I’m afraid I’m going to bang on a bit, and I can’t guarantee that these are exactly Cervone’s words, but it’s just to give you an idea of what he’s like, a kind of genius in his own way, but a genius with twisted ideas that might actually work, ideas that could bring in the money, to him.

  The opposite of Papé. The opposite of Natale as well.

  ‘You see, Clotilde, I’ve spent hours, years, studying that cove. The people who come and windsurf in Recisa Bay for the first time are young, they’re unattached, they have no kids. They’re muscular guys, tanned, adventurous types, and hot athletic girls, who look Californian, Australian or Hawaiian, even if they come from Lyon, Strasbourg or Brussels. They meet up here, they share the same passion, they think each other is gorgeous and cool, they fall in love, they have sex like crazy, they become a couple, have one kid, then another one, buy a van to put their surf boards on and the kids inside, and of course they come back to the same beach, the same spot every year to do their surfing. Except – and this is true, I’ve seen it every summer – the guy won’t give up his passion. Never! So it’s the wife who’s left sitting on the beach with the kid. And where’s Papa? Down there, you see, that big red sail going very fast, that’s Papa! She sits waiting, with a bucket and spade, a bottle of water, a book, in the shade of the beach bar if there is one; she gets bored, she has time to chat to a guy if there is one, a nice waiter, a local boy, particularly since her kid is busy with the two or three children’s games set up there. And anyway, her little blond-haired two-year-old is already starting to climb over the turnstiles, and she already knows that she’s only going to be able to hug her little prince out there on the sand until he’s six or eight at the most, before he goes and joins his hero dad on the waves; and when he comes out of the water he’ll say, “You should have seen us, Maman. Papa and I had a brilliant time”, and then she will smile and feel happy, happy for them at least, when she hasn’t been out windsurfing for ten years, and she waits the whole year for those three weeks of holiday and sits there alone on the beach, just waiting for her son and her husband; and in the evenings she will hang up their wetsuits and tend to their bruises. I could go into even more detail, Clotilde, but I think you understand my plan of attack. Can you tell me of another place on the planet where the most beautiful girls in the world are sitting all on their own, getting bored? No! When the big muscly men are out at sea, your only chance is the waiting room. That’s the place for men whose only true advantage is to be in the right place at the right time.’

  My eyes swivel from one side of the peninsula to the other, and then they come rest on Cervone. I stare at him, with his two-bit sociology, incredulous. Still no trace of the Aryon.

  And he’s got me.

  ‘Don’t believe me then, Clotilde. Don’t believe me. Find yourself a surfer, an explorer or a space man who promises you the stars and then we’ll talk again. But Recisa Bay is where I’m going to find a girl who’s better looking than me, who’s kinder, and hard-working, and affectionate.’

  ‘You really are hopeless!’

  I shouldn’t have said that, I know, but it just came out like that. I immediately felt a bit like the representative of all the surfers’ wives, and before them the wives of the sailors, the lorry drivers, the soldiers, all those women who spent their lives waiting for their lovers to come home.

  Cervone is clearly annoyed.

  ‘Bitch! What do you expect from that old man of yours? Stop scanning the horizon, he’s not coming back any time soon. You want me to tell you where the Aryon is? Where your Natale Angeli has gone? He’s taken a trip with your mother! Oh yes, my girl, the only thing those dolphins are going to get to eat is your mum’s bra and panties when your angel throws them in.’

  I want him to shut up. I stare like an idiot at the white sails gliding gently on the horizon. Sailing boats, just sailing boats, no fishing boats. But Cervone is off again.

  ‘Don’t be sad, my darling. Don’t be cross with your mother. She’s pretty. She’s sexy. It would be wrong of her to deprive herself. And also she’s been delicate enough to go out and have Angeli screw her on the high seas. Not like your father …’

  ‘What about my father?’

  And here that bastard Cervone has scored a point. He doesn’t add a word, he just stares at the Port of Stareso on his right, from where the Aryon set off, and gazes along the customs path, until his eye comes to rest on the Revellata lighthouse.

  Then he says:

  ‘The lighthouse, like everything else around here, belongs to the Idrissis. I think your father must have the key.’

  I left him.

  I walked along the path, towards the lighthouse a hundred metres in front of me.

  I pushed open the door, which wasn’t bolted.

  I stepped forward, I heard muffled laughter.

  I looked up.

  I slowly climbed the spiral staircase, until I was seized by vertigo, not because of the spinning stairs, the heat, the heigh
t, the sheer drop you were aware of each time you passed a slit in the wall, but because, in my naivety, I expected that there would be two of them, dad and his mistress.

  Only two.

  *

  * *

  It’s the big day, he said to himself again, closing the notebook.

  The day when the witnesses must confess … or be silent for ever.

  48

  23 August 2016, 8 a.m.

  Cervone Spinello liked to get up early, walk around the campsite before the tourists woke up, stroll along the deserted alleys, listen to the snores from the tents, sometimes the sighs, count the empty wine bottles under the cold barbecues, pass silently by the campers wrapped in their sleeping-bags. He imagined himself as a landowner surveying his domain, greeting people, his peasants, assessing the harvest that was about to come; ensuring order and harmony simply by his presence.

  Cervone liked to get up early, but not too early.

  The alarm at 7.30; jumping out of bed at 7.45.

  Anika, his wife, went to work a good hour before he did every morning, and stood at reception settling the accounts, managing supplies, recording arrivals and departures; a ritual which meant that from daybreak she was entirely at the disposal of the first campers who came to claim their breakfast, their morning paper, or to ask for ideas for that day’s outing.

  Perfect.

  Anika didn’t look up from her Excel spreadsheet when Cervone passed in front of her with his coffee. Cervone was aware that behind his back people were asking questions. Anika had just turned forty, and she had the energy of a twenty-year-old summer-camp instructor – bossy and hard-headed with suppliers, tender and patient with the children, laughing and flirtatious with the men, affable and chatty with the women, and fluent in six European languages including Corsican and Catalan. Anika was a former windsurfer, who had come from Montenegro one summer and settled in Recisa Bay. Cervone had stolen her from her boyfriend, a nouveau-riche Kosovan who had disappeared again all by himself in his 4x4 Chevrolet. Quite reasonably people wondered, what was such a charming, competent, intelligent woman doing with such an idiot?