Time Is a Killer

by Michel Bussi

  She was worried about the time, 11.32 a.m., and let go of Clotilde’s hand, then added the lentils to a pot of boiling water. Speranza peeled the onions, not betraying the least emotion.

  ‘Every summer,’ Lisabetta went on, avoiding Speranza’s eyes, ‘Salomé went off to cry. She was a proud girl, so she chose to hide rather than see Paul kissing his wife on Alga beach. Or see him playing with his children. So she wouldn’t feel like poking her own eyes out at the sight of the happiness that should have been hers. That, my darling, is why you hardly ever saw her.’ She slid the cubes of panzetta and the onions into a frying pan and added olive oil. ‘But time was Salomé’s ally. Between the Penelopes and the whores, the Penelopes always win out in the end.’

  The word ‘whore’ coming from old Lisabetta’s mouth made Clotilde jump. What hatred must a grandmother feel to use such a coarse term? Speranza punctuated her words with the sound of plates being stacked.

  ‘After ten years or so,’ Lisabetta continued, ‘all of Palma’s trump cards began to fade. Everything that had charmed your father. The unfamiliar, her difference, her exoticism, call it what you will. Paff! It’s always like that here. The Corsicans become sailors, teachers, businessmen, so they can leave, because they’re young, they feel as if they’re suffocating on the island. They think they’ll be able to breathe better elsewhere, somewhere that smells different, but in the end all that remains are the scents of childhood. You see, my darling? His Austro-Hungarian princess had sentenced him to live not in a palace, but in a detached house in the Normandy suburbs. With a garden twenty metres by twenty, when eighty hectares awaited him here. The view of cornfields rather than the Mediterranean, not to mention the lack of sun, his childhood friends, or his job as a turf salesman. So yes, he missed Corsica, but he was trapped and inevitably, unconsciously, he blamed Palma.’

  She checked the heat of the stove, stirred the chopped tomatoes, and then gently took Clotilde’s hand again.

  ‘I don’t know anything more than that, my darling. Was it your father who beckoned to Salomé? Or did she come to him? I can’t tell you which summer it was when they started talking to each other again, which summer when they kissed, which summer they fell in love once more, whether it was all on the same day or took years.’ She glanced briefly at Speranza. ‘I can’t even tell you if your father was sincere, whether or not he still loved your mother, whether he really loved Salomé again, I don’t know anything about that, no one knew, not me or Speranza, when Salomé jumped from the Revellata lighthouse at Christmas 1988. Dr Pinheiro took us aside and told us that Salomé would survive, that there was nothing wrong with her, that the broom bushes had broken her fall … but now she had to have additional tests, not for her but for the baby. It was the baby he was worried about.’

  Speranza wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron, then threw away the onion and tomato peelings.

  ‘Salomé was pregnant. It was too late for her to have an abortion, she was too far gone. The baby was born on 5 May 1989. He came into the world without a cry, with one arm, one leg and half of his face already paralysed. So Salomé adopted another strategy, that of the young mother who has nothing left to lose, let alone her honour, but who will risk everything to save that of her son. That summer, for the first time, Salomé stopped hiding. She started showing herself at the beach, she set down her towel a metre from your mother’s, she undid her top on the pretext of breastfeeding her son; she strolled around the market in Port de Stareso in a flimsy dress, she even rolled her pram over Palma’s feet. Of course your mother knew it was Salomé. Of course she knew who the baby’s father was. Yes, that summer, even though you couldn’t have known at the age of fifteen, Salomé took your mother to the brink. And it worked – probably beyond all her dreams.’

  11.36 a.m.

  Lisabetta added the figatelli to the frying pan, scattered it with thyme and dropped in half a bay leaf.

  ‘Your mother took a lover …’

  Clotilde was about to protest, no, Mamy, that’s not what happened, nothing happened between Natale Angeli and my mother, but her grandmother knocked the stewpot against the gas with a sound like a gong, and Clotilde imagined it was to make her stay quiet.

  ‘Salomé confronted your father, reminded him of his responsibilities. She carried little Orsu around in a scarf, wrapped against her breasts. Now it was child versus child, woman versus woman, Corsica versus Continent. Your mother’s name was Idrissi, seven letters at the bottom of a register in the town hall, but everything else, everything that the name Idrissi represented, belonged to Salomé.

  A thought darted into Clotilde’s mind. That her father, in that summer of ’89, might have thought about abandoning them, letting them go back home with Maman while he stayed there, in Arcanu, to bring up another child, to establish another family.

  Lisabetta uncorked a bottle of wine, Clos Columbu, 2007.

  ‘Everything came crashing down on 23 August 1968 – the day when Palma put up her tent on La Revellata. That day would be played out over and over again.’

  She tasted the wine and pulled a face before going on.

  ‘Your mother still had the advantage, I can assure you. Your father was a dutiful man. He would never have abandoned you. He would never have let your mother take the ferry back alone, without him. Palma was going to win, as she did every year. On that particular day, 23 August 1989, he had decorated the table with yellow roses, while every other year they were red, for passion. In the language of roses, yellow means a plea for forgiveness, for a mistake, an infidelity. On Saint Rose’s Day she and your father would go and have the gourmet menu at Casa di Stella, they would spend the evening there, they would spend the night, make up for a year, until the following summer. Salomé had no choice, she had to bet everything she had on that evening. I suppose you remember that last evening, my darling, there were about fifteen of us around the table, friends, cousins, having a drink before going to the concert at the church of Santa Lucia in Prezzuna. But you can’t have known what happened next, you had left the table and gone to sleep on a bench with your music in your ears.’

  Clotilde remembered those last moments. Her notebook, the crazy rhythm of Mano Negra, the shouting in the yard that she had ignored.

  ‘When Salomé came into the yard, holding the baby in her arms, we were all thunderstruck.’

  There was a silence. Lisabetta seemed reluctant to continue. Slowly, Speranza got to her feet and walked towards the next room. When she came back, she merely swept aside the scraps of meat with her sleeve and set down a frame on the table. Without a word. It was a portrait. A very beautiful woman. Slightly luminous skin. Black almond-shaped eyes, a straight, slightly prominent nose, like the crest of a ridge cascading down towards her parted lips.

  Definitely Salomé. Clotilde was disturbed by this stranger whose face and form seemed surprisingly familiar. Lisabetta raised her knife and pointed it at the photograph.

  ‘Yes, your mother and Salomé looked similar. That’s probably why your father first noticed her. Same eyes, same waist, same smile, same grace, but with added mystery.’

  Clotilde stared at the portrait. Images rose to the surface, images that she had almost erased, of the first time she had seen Salomé, the day before the accident, at the Revellata lighthouse. From behind, never quite face on.

  11.42 a.m.

  Lisabetta firmly mixed the cubes of panzetta, the chopped figatelli, the onions, the thyme and the tomatoes, holding the wooden spoon in one hand and adding more oil with the other. For a moment she seemed to concentrate on her cooking, before turning down the gas under the frying pan and looking back at Clotilde.

  ‘Yes, my darling. We were all thunderstruck. Your mother must have interpreted our silence as support for Salomé, but I think that most of all it was just surprise. Salomé had decided to go for broke, to make your mother understand that Arcanu wasn’t her place, that it never had been. However beautiful she might have been, Palma could be rejected and replaced by an
other. So far, in order to win your father back, Salomé had fought dress against dress, bikini against bikini, skin against skin, to prove that she could be just as pretty. But that evening she had taken it a step further. When she walked into the yard that night, Salomé was wearing her hair exactly the way your mother wore it, in a chignon fastened at the back by a black ribbon, the same make-up, the same dark line on her lips, the same bracelet, the same ruby necklace, the same perfume, Imiza, with its immortal scent. Your mother must have spent over an hour in front of the mirror to be the fairest of them all that evening at Casa di Stella, wanting to please your father … and Salomé had done exactly the same. Tendril for tendril. Brushstroke for brushstroke. Salomé had even taken her insolence a stage further. You must remember, Clotilde, that evening your mother was wearing a Benoa dress, the one that your father had bought for her in Calvi. Salomé was wearing the same dress! She had spent almost 300 francs on it, I found out later, on an outfit identical to her rival’s, to show Paul that in the same short, low-cut dress she could be just as seductive. Arousing, even. As soon as she arrived she handed the baby to Speranza, his grandmother, without saying a word. The conversations all came to a sudden halt, and it takes a lot to shut up fifteen Corsicans who have already drained five bottles of Clos Columbu. Only Cassanu dared to say anything. ‘Sit down, Salomé. Sit down.’ He got to his feet and drew up a chair, right between himself and me.

  Clotilde looked out of the kitchen window at the empty courtyard of the farm, the pergola, the big holm oak. She couldn’t believe it had all happened here, on 23 August 1989, over the course of a few minutes, while she was asleep, because she’d spent the whole of the previous night spying on her brother, because she liked to isolate herself, because she hated endless family reunions. Behind her, Speranza got up to throw the debris into the bin and then came and sat down again, apron around her neck and knife in her hand, silently listening to the rest of Lisabetta’s story.

  ‘It was so provocative, my darling. Such a humiliation for Palma. None of it was premeditated on our part, but we did nothing to stop her. I even joined in, to tell you the truth, and poured Salomé a glass of wine. How could your mother respond to this girl who was taking her place as if she had never existed? This girl who was attacking her without saying a single word? What could your mother say, my darling? Nothing, like the rest of us? You remember her, Clotilde, saying nothing wasn’t really her style. Your mother got up, I remember it as if it were yesterday, I remember each word, each breath, each sound. We’ve weighed up every one since then, believe me. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about it again, when I haven’t wondered if it wasn’t the greatest folly of our lives.’

  Clotilde was shivering with cold. Even though she was sitting down, her head was spinning. She rested her frozen fingers on the immaculate tiles of the nearest wall.

  ‘Your mother pushed back her chair,’ she went on, ‘turned towards your father and simply said, “Tell her to leave.” Your father didn’t say anything, so your mother repeated, in a louder voice, “Tell her to leave.”

  ‘All the cousins, the whole family, all the friends were looking at him. All hostile to your mother. All against him if he took her side. “Don’t ask me to do that, Palma. I’m here, in my home. With my family. You tell her to leave.”

  ‘I still remember the silence, my poor Clotilde. Even the birds, even the wind in the branches of the oak tree had fallen silent. Your father took such a long time to answer, as if his whole life depended on it. Which it did, of course. Finally he said, “Please, Palma. This isn’t easy for anyone. We’ve all got to make an effort.” When I think of your mother’s face, I can still see her fury. We all saw it, that look. Of anger. Of hatred. And that clinched it. Only your father didn’t notice, I think. Losing his wife didn’t matter in that moment, he wasn’t afraid of losing Palma. At that moment the only thing he was afraid of was losing his honour in front of his family. Then he added, “We all have to make an effort. Me. You. Tonight I’m leaving my family behind in order to spend the evening with you.” And she said, “An effort? Today?”

  ‘Then Palma pushed over the chair in front of her, the nearest vase of yellow roses and a bottle of Clos Columbu. Maybe you heard some of the noise at that moment, some shouting? Maybe you woke up?’

  Clotilde saw herself shrugging, turning up the volume of her Walkman, sinking back into her dreams.

  Lisabetta turned off the gas under the frying pan, checked to see how the lentils were doing and started laying the table. 11.57 a.m. Perfect.

  ‘Not many words were exchanged after that. Four sentences, no more, all shrieked by Palma. Four sentences that sounded normal at the time, four sentences that we expected, perhaps what we’d even hoped for. It was afterwards, after the accident, when we recalled them again, like an endless tape … it was afterwards that they assumed such weight.’

  ‘What did my mother say, Mamy?’

  ‘She said four things, and with each phrase she took one step further into the darkness that was falling over the mountain.’

  ‘“Go to your concert, go with her!”

  ‘A step.

  ‘“I’ll make way for her, because that’s what you want, what you all want!”

  ‘A step, and this time she turned round.

  ‘“But I warn you, don’t take the children with you.”

  ‘One last step, before leaving the yard.

  ‘“You hear me, off you go with her. But don’t take the children in the car. Leave them out of all this.”

  ‘My poor darling, I have thought so often about those last words. I’ve often told myself that here, in the yard, faced with us, faced with the clan, you were all your mother could cling to, that if Corsica took back her husband, she would never agree to it taking her children. Her only battle would be to keep you by her side. Even if that girl took her place, stole everything from her, she would never touch her children. That’s what I thought, probably because I’m a mother and that’s how I would have reacted myself. I think that’s why Palma was so insistent that your father and Salomé didn’t take you to the polyphonic concert.’

  Behind her, Speranza banged a pile of plates down violently on the table. Clotilde didn’t turn around. Lisabetta went on.

  ‘But neither Cassanu, nor Speranza, nor anyone else to my knowledge thought as I did. Your mother ran off down the path, straight down the hill to where the car was parked. As soon as she was out of sight, Salomé pushed her chair back, went over to Paul to kiss him and slide her hand down his back, as if nothing had happened during the last fifteen years, only a simple parenthesis that she was closing again. She stayed like that for a long time, and then, at a leisurely pace, she went down towards the Fuego and sat down in the passenger seat. She had won!’

  Speranza banged down every glass, every fork, every knife at her disposal.

  ‘You know what happened next, my darling. Your father was probably reluctant to run after your mother, but he probably would have done so if he hadn’t had fifteen pairs of eyes fixed on him, including his father’s. He had just lost all of his dignity. He had been a mere toy in Palma’s and Salomé’s hands. And so he tried to regain the little authority he had left, and did what all men do when they are humiliated – they raise their voice to their children, sometimes their hands, although your father never did the latter, as you know. They issue orders, even unfair ones, to prove that they too can command obedience. The whole clan waited, as if watching a play, to see what your father, the heir to Arcanu, would do. His mistress was waiting for him in the car. Your father got to his feet and raised his voice to Nicolas, ordering him to go and find his sister, to get into the back of the Fuego and not to say a word.’

  Lisabetta stopped for a moment and stared right into her granddaughter’s eyes.

  ‘I don’t know what your brother had planned to do that evening, perhaps an outing with some friends or his girlfriend. Oh, how disappointed he was. My God, when I picture his face, he looked as if
he had been struck by lightning, as if his mother’s departure had been nothing in comparison. But he didn’t flinch. I didn’t know your poor brother well enough to be sure who he got his pride from, that sense of duty – your father or your mother, both, perhaps – but however great his disappointment, his rancour, his sense of injustice, he didn’t say a word, he didn’t try to negotiate and he went in search of you.’

  Clotilde heard her brother’s last words as she sat motionless on her bench, she saw her father’s hand closing around her wrist, dragging her, hurting her, as he had never done before.

  Now she understood.

  ‘You emerged, my darling, still in your dream world. No one said anything. How could you have suspected that the woman sitting in the car in your mother’s place, that woman whose hair was done like your mother’s, who was dressed like your mother, whose make-up emphasised feature for feature the striking resemblance with your mother; that woman who was holding your father’s hand; how could you have suspected that that woman wasn’t your mother?’