A Sun for the Dying

by Jean-Claude Izzo

  He opened his eyes. Mirjana was smiling. She took another drag, for herself.

  “You see,” she said. “It’s the same with everything. You mustn’t be afraid.”

  *

  Later, they both lay down under the blankets.

  “Come,” Mirjana had said.

  She lay huddled against him, her hand on his chest. He breathed in the smell of her hair. A smell of shampoo and cold cigarettes.

  Slowly, Mirjana unbuttoned Rico’s shirt. In his head, all the memories started to mingle and become confused. When Mirjana’s fingers brushed against his chest, he jumped, as if he had just had an electric shock.

  “How long has it been?”

  “A long time.”

  She opened Rico’s shirt wide, put her cheek against his skin, and let her fingers glide over his stomach. Rico’s memories seemed to have been chased away, pushed far back in his mind. Behind that horizon line, imaginary perhaps, where nothing else mattered but the present moment. Now his mind was like a clear blue sky. A mistral sky. He thought about love. About what love was. The pleasure of loving. The tenderness of days. The gentleness of moments. What shared happiness meant. That ever-necessary, indispensable lightness of words and gestures and thoughts.

  “Do you want to make love?”

  Rico turned to Mirjana. His eyes searched for hers in the darkness. “What do you want?”

  She snuggled up to him and held him tight.

  “We don’t have to do anything,” Rico said. “We’re fine like this. It doesn’t matter, all that . . . I like to feel your fingers on me. They’re so soft.”

  “That’s what I want too. Your hands.”

  They undressed each other, and when they were naked, they slowly caressed each other. They had the whole night before them. An eternity. An eternity just for them. One night.

  At one point, Rico felt Mirjana’s tears on his shoulder. Tears of happiness. He remembered a song, revived by Bashung, I think, and started singing in Mirjana’s ear.

  I’ll tell her words that are blue

  Words that make us all brand new

  I’ll tell her all the words that are blue

  All the words that make us brand new

  all the words that are blue

  all the words that are blue . . .

  18.

  FOR THE LAST PERSON WHO DIES,

  EVERYTHING WILL BE EASIER

  The door burst open. As if smashed in by a bulldozer. Rico was sitting on the floor, reading, just like the previous day, near the door to the toilet. He leapt to his feet. Mirjana, who had been sleeping, sat up abruptly on the mattress. Distraught. In a panic.

  “What is it?”

  Before she had time to react, two men came charging into the shop. The heavier, more thickset of the two was in jeans and a brown jacket. The other man was taller and thinner, and wore a long black coat. He walked into the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his lips.

  “Fatos!” Mirjana cried.

  She wrapped herself in the blanket and looked around for her tracksuit. She saw Rico walking unsteadily toward the two men.

  “What do you want?” he yelled.

  “Rico, no,” she stammered.

  But the heavy guy had already thrown himself on Rico and grabbed him by the neck.

  “You just keep your mouth shut, O.K.?”

  And he shoved him out of the way.

  Rico’s back hit the wall. It took his breath away. He felt his legs give way, but he didn’t fall. He stood there with his back against the wall, dazed, gasping for breath.

  Fatos went up to Mirjana, put his hand on the back of her neck and grabbed her by the hair. The pain made her cry out and drop the blanket. He pulled her into the centre of the room and let go of her.

  Mirjana stood there, helpless, making no attempt to hide her private parts with her hands. She held herself straight, with her head high.

  “Hello,” Fatos said.

  Now Rico understood Mirjana’s silences in the bistro the day before. The ambiguity of some of her explanations. He looked from Mirjana to Fatos.

  “No panties even . . .” Fatos turned to the heavy guy, who was standing behind him, keeping an eye on Rico. “It was worth the journey, don’t you think, Alex?”

  “It sure was!”

  From the way he said that, it was obvious he was already imagining sticking his dick into Mirjana.

  “Fatos,” Mirjana said again. The fear had gone from her voice.

  “You didn’t make it easy for me to find you, you know.”

  And he slapped her full in the face. The impact almost made Mirjana lose her balance. She took a few steps back and rose to her full height. Her head was still held high.

  “But as you can see, I found you in the end.”

  He hit her again, just as hard, with the back of his hand this time. A few drops of blood appeared on Mirjana’s cheek, caused by the big signet ring Fatos wore on his right hand.

  “Leave her alone!” Rico screamed, finally getting his breath back. “Leave her alone!”

  “Who is this clown?” Fatos asked.

  “This has nothing to do with him,” Mirjana said.

  “I asked you who he is.”

  “A guy I met . . . In a bar.” Her voice was harsh, toneless.

  Fatos turned to face Rico. He looked him up and down, with a disgusted expression. The threadbare jeans, the old sailor’s sweater Monique had given him. Their eyes met. Fatos’s horrible dark eyes contained all the vileness, all the meanness in the world.

  “A night with her isn’t cheap. Did you know that, asshole? I hope you have the money to pay for her!”

  “He didn’t have anywhere to sleep,” Mirjana said.

  Fatso turned back to her. “You take your clothes off for bums now, do you?”

  Fatos raised his hand to slap her again. Mirjana saw it coming and tried to dodge it. Fatos’s hand hit her temple. Hard. Dazed by the blow, she swayed.

  “Leave her alone!” Rico cried again.

  He wasn’t afraid of being hit. He didn’t stand a chance against these two guys, but he didn’t care. He was filled with rage. And hate. It was always the same shit, everywhere you went. He stood with his back and ass against the wall, ready to jump them. Ready to attack. But before he could do anything, Fatos, as if he knew what Rico was planning, clicked his fingers and pointed at him.

  Alex walked up to Rico and punched him hard in the stomach. Once. Twice. His fists were like steel. Rico was again thrown against the wall. Flashes of white light exploded under his eyelids. This time, his legs abandoned him and he slid down the wall. Like a slug. Rico had that image of himself, as he collapsed on the floor.

  Bent double, his eyes half closed, he tried to get his breath back. His stomach seemed to have set off an avalanche of hard stones. With sharp edges. With each breath he took, all these stones ripped his lungs apart then rose to his throat. Choking him. Mouth open, foaming, he gasped for air.

  “Get dressed!” Fatos ordered Mirjana. “You look pitiful.”

  She went to pick up her tracksuit, which was lying rolled up at the foot of the mattress. She moved without hesitation. Then she caught Rico’s eye, and her movements became ­slower. For a moment, she even seemed to remain motionless. Until she pulled the tracksuit up over her pubis. But that slow motion may only have existed in Rico’s head. At that moment, he told himself he would have to get used to the idea that he would never see Mirjana again. Just as you do when someone has died.

  Fatos walked up to Rico. With the tip of his shoe—an impeccably polished black shoe with a gold buckle on the side—he turned Rico’s face toward him.

  “The woman is mine. Have you got that, asshole? I bought her. In Taranto. And I paid a lot for her. Far too much to let her be fucked by losers like you.”

  Rico tried to look at Mirjana again. He saw her pulling on the tracksuit top.

  “Look at me!” Fatos said.

  The tip of his shoe slid from R
ico’s cheek down to his chin. Fatos exerted a little pressure.

  “She wanted to see Paris,” he said, laughing. “The Eiffel Tower. The Champs Elysées. The Galeries Lafayette . . . All that crap. But it all costs money. Do you know that, asshole?”

  The tip of the shoe moved up to Rico’s nose, with the heel wedged under his chin. Fatos pressed.

  “Leave him alone,” Mirjana said. “You found me. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “I’ve lost a lot of money. More than three months’ income, Mirjana. Plus all the money I spent trying to find you. Grenoble, Lyons, Marseilles, Arles. I looked everywhere for you. You can’t imagine how much it cost! And you go and fuck a loser like this.”

  Fatos’s shoe pressed more heavily against Rico’s nose and chin.

  “You found me,” she said again.

  Fatos took his foot from Rico’s face and put it down on the floor.

  “Yes . . . That’s true, that’s true . . .”

  Fatos’s leg shot out, and his foot hit Rico full in the face. On the nose. More flashes, red this time, streaked across his sight. The impact made him close his eyes. Blood gushed from his nose.

  “I have money!” Mirjana cried. “I’ve been working!”

  She was scared now. Not for herself. For Rico. She had realized that it wasn’t her Fatos was going to beat, in order to get his revenge, it was Rico. She was one of his meal tickets. Rico was nothing.

  “At last you’re talking sense. How much have you made in all this time?”

  Mirjana opened her suitcase. From it she took a small blue canvas bag, put her hand in and pulled out a handful of banknotes. Hundreds, tens, fifties . . .

  “About ten thousand, I think. I haven’t counted. This is all I’ve earned. I haven’t spent any of it, Fatos. I haven’t spent any of it.”

  “Ten thousand . . .” He turned to Alex. “Here, count it!”

  “You see,” Mirjana said.

  “What do I see?”

  “There’s money. It’s what you wanted.”

  Mirjana took a step forward.

  “Where are you going?”

  “He’s bleeding,” she replied, pointing to Rico. “I—”

  “Don’t move.”

  Fatos lit a cigarette, took a long drag, then held it out to Mirjana. She shook her head.

  “It’s up to you.”

  “Nine thousand two hundred,” Alex announced.

  “Nine thousand two hundred . . . That’s not ten thousand . . . In my opinion, Mirjana, you’ve been selling yourself cheap. Unless you’ve spent your time fucking every bum you picked up from the gutter.”

  With great speed, Fatos swiveled and again kicked Rico. In the stomach this time. Rico let out a cry. Or rather, a moan. His eyes misted over. Fatos lifted his foot again.

  “Stop!” Mirjana screamed hysterically. “Stop!”

  Fatos’s foot came down to within about four inches of Rico’s stomach.

  She threw herself to her knees in front of Fatos, her ass on her heels. She was crying, with her head down and her shoulders hunched. “Please.”

  Fatos stubbed out his cigarette on the floor, then crouched by Mirjana, took her chin in his hand and forced her to look at him.

  “You’re just a stupid bitch! That’s what you are! I’m putting you to work at Barbès. You’ll be fucked by Arabs and niggers all day long. Get the idea?”

  Rico was listening, his eyes streaming with tears. He remembered the vagrants at the station. The girl, and her fucking mongrel dog sniffing his crotch. He’d have liked to have that dog with him right now. He’d have liked to see its jaws close over Fatos’s balls.

  A dog! Rico screamed to himself in his head.

  He slowly relaxed his legs and slid his feet toward the wall. He braced himself against it. He gathered what little strength he had left, and all the hatred he felt.

  I’m a dog!

  He released the tension in his body and leaped. Jaws open. Fangs out. Foaming at the mouth.

  A fucking dog!

  He aimed for Fatos’s throat and sunk his teeth in his neck. Fatos screamed. Alex started kicking Rico in the back and punching him on the head. With each blow, the flashes split his eyes. His head. White. Red. White. Red. Red.

  Red.

  And the blood.

  Then, suddenly, Rico didn’t feel anything anymore. He had let go.

  “Fucking asshole!” Fatos cried.

  Blood was gushing from his neck.

  He kicked Rico again. On the chin.

  “That’s enough,” Alex said. “That’s enough. He’s had what was coming to him.”

  He bent over him. He’d stopped breathing.

  In Rico’s head, he felt how damp the darkness was. The black ground, crawling with worms.

  No. Not now, no.

  Why aren’t you smiling?

  Not yet.

  Why won’t you give me a smile?

  No.

  The taste of blood on his lips. In his throat. Fatos’s blood. And his own.

  “No,” he moaned.

  “We have to get out of here, Fatos. I think he’s dying.”

  “Rico.”

  That soft, caressing voice.

  Mirjana was sobbing.

  She hadn’t stopped screaming. Begging.

  She kneeled beside him. Her lips against Rico’s ear, she whispered, “I’m dead, don’t forget. Dead . . .”

  She kissed him on the forehead.

  Fatos grabbed her and pulled her off him.

  “Take your things, and let’s go.”

  Rico heard the zip of the suitcase being closed. And footsteps. Their footsteps.

  He couldn’t open his eyes.

  To see her one last time.

  Mirjana.

  “Bastards,” he muttered.

  But no one heard him.

  Everything went black in his head.

  Darkness.

  Rico said, one evening when we were looking at the sea, “When Titi died, it was as if something of myself had gone. With Mirjana . . . You know something, Abdou? It’ll be easier for the last person who dies. Because he’ll already have lost everything.”

  PART TWO

  19.

  SHALL WE GO DOWN TO THE SEA?

  I’m Abdou.

  I’ve been scuffling in Marseilles for two months now. I’m Algerian. From Algiers. I’m thirteen. Well, that’s what I tell people. I may be fourteen, or fifteen. As I don’t have any papers, I can’t be sure. But I don’t give a damn about my age. It doesn’t make any difference to my life. That’s what I told Rico, the day we met.

  It was a cold, gray January afternoon. We were sitting on a bench on Place de Lenche, in the Panier, the old quarter near the harbor. Rico was out of breath from walking all the way.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re right. You’re as old as you feel.”

  “As old as your peter,” I said.

  We both laughed.

  I liked to make Rico laugh.

  I’ll never forget the way we met.

  I was coming up Rue Caisserie. A street that takes you all the way around the hill of the Panier.

  Rico was glued to a billboard. A poster for a brand of women’s underwear called Aubade. The poster showed this fantastic woman’s ass, two nice plump mounds, thrust right out under the noses of passers-by. It really stopped you in your tracks, I can tell you! Especially as the girl’s tiny panties, a few little wisps of lace, were stuck right inside the crack of her buttocks, making the two mounds even more mouth-watering. At the bottom of the poster were the words: Lesson No 27. Create an area of turbulence.

  I’d come to a standstill behind Rico. As hypnotized as he was. Even now, when I close my eyes and imagine how it would be if a girl really did show her ass to me like that, I quickly go from a “state of agitation and disorder”—that’s the definition of turbulence, I was in a bookstore once and I looked it up in a dictionary—to a complete earthquake! To this day, I don’t know what the previous lessons were, but A
ubade’s No. 27 always makes me want to jerk off.

  Rico must have sensed me behind him. He turned, looked at me in surprise, then pointed to the poster. “That’s my wife’s ass. Sophie.”

  “Interesting,” I replied.

  “Yeah . . . Especially if you can stick your cock in there. I forgot it was so . . .” With his hand, he drew the wonderful curve of the lower back and buttocks in the air. “Wow!” His hand fell again, as if exhausted. “It gave me a shock!”

  “No kidding, that’s really your wife’s ass?”

  “Yes, it is! Well . . . I mean it’s . . . It’s like Sophie Marceau’s breasts . . .”

  I couldn’t see the connection.

  “You don’t understand . . . Look . . .” He practically pressed my nose to the poster. “You see the texture of the skin? It’s the same. Identical. Her twin, that’s what this is. Her twin.” He took a few steps back. “Sexy ass, don’t you think?”

  “Sure is!” I laughed. “Hey, you were some lucky guy.”

  “Yeah . . .” he said, wearily. Without taking his eyes off the poster, he lit a cigarette, a Fortuna. “Yeah,” he said again, turning to me. “Since then, her ass has fallen into other hands. Enemy hands.”

  I laughed. “The world is full of backstabbers.”

  Rico laughed too, then he started coughing fit to burst. “You’re right, the backstabbers take everything and leave you with nothing. The poor are the worst. They’d even steal the crumbs from your pockets . . .” He shrugged. “Are you from around here? I think I’ve seen you before.”

  I liked it when he said that.

  Since I’d started bumming around Marseilles, I’d often run into Rico in this neighborhood near the Vieux-Port, and had gotten used to his weird appearance. Wrapped up in his black parka, with his navy blue woollen hat pulled down tight over his head, he’d walk along with his back bent, looking into the distance, dragging a grocery cart behind him. One of those little carts with a canvas bag on them, the kind you see women use when they go shopping. I never saw Rico without his cart. Always full of newspapers, knick-knacks, old books that people gave him or that he picked up here and there on the street.