Marseille Noir (Akashic Noir)

by Cédric Fabre

  Above all, he had a good time screwing as much as he could at the expense of his new employers. Sex had been his great passion since kindergarten, where he had taken advantage of his tender age to thrust his finger into plump-cheeked little girls. None of those pink-ribboned babies ever complained, Kevin remembered, as he stood under the sunroof at the Vieux-Port. In exchange, I’d have them eat the scabs on my knees. I’m going to collect as much money as I can and get out of here, far away, Mexico or Venezuela. I could see myself with a cushy life as a gaucho on my steed, galloping over the pampa. A kickass horse with a leather saddle branded with my initials. I feel like fucking, he said to himself as he scanned the lovers gathered under the Ombrière, busy taking pictures of themselves kissing. The Organization had forbidden him from approaching women in the street. Too risky. Abou Salem, his main contact, had told him many times that the sisters of the Revolution were there for that. Those women had girls whose main function was to satisfy the needs of the warrior brothers.

  “If you want a war wife,” Abou Salem had said, “the Organization will provide one for you.”

  I don’t feel like having one of their girls, Kevin thought. A bunch of pretentious females with martyr smiles on their faces. You listen to them, they’re all saints. Talk about sexual jihad, they’re all ass, and tits under their veils!

  In Alicante, after he’d sent a coded message to Abou Salem, the two women who came to see him at the hotel didn’t speak a word of French. They were Bulgarians who’d come to the area to pick tomatoes. They would prostitute themselves from time to time. He’d done a line of coke and those whores had taken advantage, stealing a thousand euros from him.

  Three days is a long time in this lousy place, Kevin said to himself. Marseille is a dirty city and scares the shit out of you. They Kalash all over the place. You get whacked easy as a fly under a swatter, he told himself, thinking of the gangland shootings that punctuated daily life in the Phocaean city. Abou Salem lied to me when he promised it was a fun town. A fair under the smoke, are you kidding? A plastic zoo. Sunday outings for old people and if you’re twenty, death at the foot of the hills. It’s a lot more fun up north in Roubaix!

  He grimaced in disgust as he stepped out of the way to let a mother and her huge stroller go by. Clusters of parents were taking photos of kids perched on the fiberglass animals. Kevin stood there for a while, savoring the contagious excitement of the kids clutching the animals’ necks. He, too, was excited at the idea of perching there with his legs hanging down, like on a merry-go-round. He promised himself a little nocturnal walk in front of city hall, to climb on the slanted back of the baby giraffe with red and orange spots. The muzzle of that stupid horned beast with a red mouth is at least two yards above the ground, he told himself, thrilled by the idea of mounting it. For a moment, he saw himself as a little boy of five wrapped up in his parka, squeezing the varnished neck of the wooden merry-go-round horse as hard as he could at the Christmas market in Roubaix. His dad, with his bloated face, would take big puffs on his Gitane as he encouraged him in his booming voice, holding his son’s lollipop in one hand.

  * * *

  He spent the afternoon posting selfies on his Facebook page. Kevin, reflected under the high steel umbrella: short black hair, a thin, beardless face, small translucent gray eyes, a well-defined mouth with its thick upper lip, and the receding chin of a skinny kitten. He was twenty-five, hated his soft red mouth, too feminine for his taste. Kevin, snapped in front of the ferry station with the Edmond Dantès in the background ready to raise anchor for the Frioul archipelago. Kevin, in front of the Olympique de Marseille store, the selfie he liked best, posing proudly with his brand-new Adidas sports bag, its shoulder strap almost strangling him. Kevin, next to a seagull pecking away at the remains of his shish kebab. After taking that photo, he gave the animal a big kick and broke its wing. The gull tried to take off but fell back on its clawed feet with a shriek. Kevin instantly grabbed it by its broken wing and flung it into the water where it landed on beer cans and heaps of garbage floating on the surface.

  * * *

  He took the number 83 bus to see the ocean. He wanted a selfie with his feet in the sand. The bus driver pointed him to the beach called Plage du Prophète. “If you want sand, there’s tons of it, don’t worry,” the guy said laughingly, with the vulgar accent they had around these parts. Kevin had his eyes on the man’s thick, red neck sprinkled with black hairs. He suddenly felt like throwing up and squeezed the back of the seat in front of him as hard as he could. A strong mistral wind had arisen, sending torrents of water crashing against the rocks, shiny with seafoam. The beach seemed less beautiful to him than the one in Alicante, where he’d been barely a week ago. Not one walker on the horizon. A row of magnificent homes gleamed on the hillside over the Corniche, the coast road. Kevin ran down the stairs that reeked of piss, making his way to the edge of the water. At the bottom, he shivered and closed his green parka, then thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans. The place was deserted except for an old gentleman sitting on a raffia mat watching the waves, a fishing rod next to him. Kevin was surprised by the contrast between the heart of the swarming city with its permanent hubbub and this sandy stretch of land lost in the pounding waves. A feeling of fear took hold of him. This spot was turning him away from the world of the living. When he was a child, nightmares of haunted castles would wake him up and he’d run screaming into his parents’ bed. His father would drive him out of the room. “You’re nothing but a little sissy!” he’d yell, while his mother, huddled under the blanket, watched him with her gray eyes, paralyzed by fear.

  The dark silhouette of the Château d’If, assailed by the storm, added to the impression of sinking into another dimension of darkness and terror. Kevin walked over to the man and touched his shoulder. The old guy turned around with a start, wide-eyed. Kevin raised his arm, plunged his box cutter down, and slashed the carotid artery. The blood spurted out like a geyser. The old man collapsed with all his weight. The young man knelt down beside him and gently brushed a little sand from the wet cheek of the old fellow whose eyelids were fluttering. He held up the man’s head while taking out his cell phone. He didn’t post this selfie; it went into his personal collection. He walked back, tormented by the desire to find himself a girl for the night.

  * * *

  He had reserved a room at the L’Hôtel Duc, formerly L’Hôtel de l’Oasis, in the heart of the Canebière. A plaque at the entrance said Louise Michel had died there on January 9, 1905. He had never heard of Louise Michel, the red virgin, the heroine of the Paris Commune. He was not an anarchist, still less a revolutionary. Just a bloodthirsty guy who was out to conquer the most impregnable city in France. Kevin dreamed of a submissive Marseille on her knees, sucking his dick. He was sure of it, he’d get free of this fucking place without too much trouble. His room was on the third floor, overlooking the street. When he’d arrived the night before he’d slept very badly, his sleep interrupted by the noises from the street and the incessant stampedes up and down the stairs. Adventurous customers, eager to dive into the narrow streets of the Vieux-Port. Kevin passed by the concierge, who shot him a quick look. Suddenly, he had the strong feeling that the man was reading his mind. The radio was droning on—a whole string of Koranic suras broadcasting through its tinny speakers.

  A woman came charging down the corridor. A small creature with big eyes and dark eye shadow, a scarlet mouth, and a narrow chin. Her bleached-blond hair went down to her waist. Kevin told himself it was too long and silky to be real. He breathed in big, jerky breaths, his heart beating hard. His chest hurt and he was suddenly afraid of getting a nosebleed. The girl was dressed in a pink sweater and a short black skirt that stopped halfway up her thighs. She was wearing laced black boots and a thin gold chain around her right ankle. Her translucent pink plastic earrings were the shape of kittens. Kevin had never seen earrings like them. The kittens were sticking their little pink tongues out. Her nail polish was also pink. She held he
r small hand out to him and said in a singsong accent: “Hey, brother, go get me a beer and a chicken-and-fries sandwich.”

  He almost broke her arm but controlled himself, his jaw clenched in anger. The concierge burst out laughing and said: “Come on, boy! You can’t refuse that. You’re a hit with Maria.”

  The girl didn’t take her eyes off him. She came up close enough to graze the fur of his hood. He breathed in her perfume like a madman: a mix of cinnamon and cloves. He almost ripped the bill out of her hands and slammed the door on the way out, his cheeks flushed, pursued by the mocking laugh of the concierge. That woman had treated him like a little child. This city is a shithole, Kevin raged, humiliated. He tapped a number on his cell and screamed more than he spoke: “Brother, I swear, you threw me into the lion’s den! You lied to me! You were lying all along. I’m so fuckin’ mad I could burst. This city’s a shithole!”

  Abou Salem replied calmly: “You were warned. It’s not a city, it’s a mouth. Make sure you don’t get swallowed up. Tomorrow, be at the place known as Porte d’Aix, a kind of open-air junk market. Our contact will be waiting there for you.”

  * * *

  Kevin was dying for a beer as he walked along boulevard d’Athènes. He turned onto rue Nationale and walked into the first café he saw. Two men were sitting at a table playing dice and sipping whiskey-Cokes. A flat screen was showing a muted soccer game. He paid for his beer with the money Maria had given him and went to jerk off in the bathroom while thinking of her. He imagined her ass while he was screwing her. Kevin’s naked butt was rubbing against the filthy walls, covered with drawings of cunts peppered with telephone numbers. Cheikha Rimitti’s hoarse voice was coming out of an ancient stereo. A bitter raï song about a dark-haired girl who loved a man but made fun of him. The man went crazy with desire and sliced his rival’s nose with a razor blade.

  Kevin couldn’t stand those burning laments, just as he hated Marseille rap. A rush of protest lyrics that were meant to be political. Those rappers weren’t afraid of words. They grabbed syllables in their fists and gave you an uppercut to the chin. He’d tried to listen to some of them last night in his room at the L’Hôtel Duc and had ended up with his head hanging over the sink, his face twisted by tears, vomiting. He’d rather listen to rap in English; that way he was sure not to understand a thing.

  * * *

  The next day, Kevin stationed himself at Café Mauresque on place Jules Guesde in Porte d’Aix. As he drank his Coke, his eyes searched the swarming semi-legal market. Confusion reigned in the square from one end to the other. The putrid belly of Marseille, its contaminated face. The lawn of the arc de triomphe was a seedy disaster, wretched rags scattered in all four corners. Battered sets of pots, burnt frying pans. Paperbacks with dog-eared covers and pages stained with tomato sauce. Mangy goatskin boots, trench coats in threadbare, imitation leather, fur coats moth-eaten at the armpits. A shambles of cracked dishes, handbags with their handles coming off, and old teddy bears piled up at the mouth of the gutters. Cars that couldn’t brake fast enough drove over this stuff amid the curses of the enraged drivers. All this was the residue of dumpsters from L’Estaque to the Corniche, including the Canebière. The hideous debris of stuffed bellies, picked through tirelessly and sorted night after night by a whole army of needy souls before being resold on place Jules Guesde.

  A man came up to Kevin and threw the daily paper on the table. He kept walking without stopping and turned left onto rue du Bon Pasteur. Kevin pretended to wait a moment before casting a distracted glance at the headline, quickly deciphering the address scribbled on the corner of the page. He paid for his drink and tried to make his way through the crowded sidewalks. He asked for directions from an old man sitting on a stool. The man stared at him and said: “Straight ahead on the other side of the street, son, but if I were you, I’d turn around and go back. I can see the ogress Aïcha Khandicha in her hairy clogs, holding you by the hand. You’d better go back home.”

  Kevin shook his head as he crossed the street, leaving the market behind him. The city had its professional lice-pickers. A galloping gangrene of illicit border crossers, of street people, of drunken bums, starving runaways, old men in furnished rooms, and families pushing shopping carts that swayed under the debris. These dark creatures roamed through the streets with their backpacks, armed with a twisted metal clothes hanger: the garbage reaper these men and women use to poke around in the heart of the trash. Crooks beware! Garbage was divided equitably by sector. People were on stir-duty every other night, airing out their fair share of refuse. By dawn, the filthy display would attract a whole crowd of sinister-looking characters along with the many shoppers. Hoods would come to sell off the product of their robberies, fighting over the territory occupied by the dirty kettles, broken cups, and scratched vinyl records. A free-for-all where fits of anger most often degenerated into knifings, under the frightened eyes of the garbage-pickers. It was like an open manure hole at the gates of the city. The rotting face of a horrible world displayed in broad daylight. The frightful foreboding of the coming end. People with no rights, less-than-nothings appropriating the scraps that had fallen off the tables. Folks put up with the wretched of the earth, fed by the leftovers they had turned down. But they raged against the ones in the garbage trade, for they attracted all kinds of shady dealings. Terror loosened tongues. The sack of the city was organized from this sinister spot where criminals mixed with street peddlers. Among the latter, there were a handful of runaways from the other bank of the Mediterranean. Not content with robbing open-air dumpsters, these wretched wetbacks invited the worst villains to join the party. Pressure cookers sold without lids, chipped coffee cups, and heaps of old shoes lay next to the contents of recently stolen handbags.

  Visitors would enter the city and bypass place Jules Guesde, that crossroads of desolation. They would leave it the same way, taking with them the spectacle of those men and women in charge of cleaning out our garbage cans. Some inhabitants of the city would gladly go cast stones at the devils on place Jules Guesde, so much did they fear being confused with these seekers of rancid crap. They threatened to beat them up. Officials made a lot of noise denouncing depravity and murder.

  “Roadblock, roadblock,” men were whispering, caught by surprise at the sudden arrival of the cops, panting as they fled down boulevard des Dames dominated by the glass façade of the Conseil Régional. The disorderly troupe was retreating toward rue du Bon Pasteur, a little commercial street so narrow that the disparate stampede bumped against passersby and knocked over stalls in the bazaar before scattering into the adjacent streets. The exhausted runners huddled in the doorways without dropping their stuff, loaded to hilt like a caravan of mules in the Atlas Mountains heading for the souk. Their loads stowed in total disarray, as they had to pack in a rush. The bundles were coming undone, revealing the black bottoms of pots and pans and vomiting a flow of old, sodden rags. Moldy clothes with sleeves frayed at the wrist swept over the asphalt like the arms of hanged men cut down in haste.

  Utterly bewildered, Kevin escaped from the bedlam and left to get the package of powder. He had to deliver the drugs to some other European city. They would only tell him where when he was just about to leave. Tomorrow, he told himself, I’ll get their message and I can finally get the hell out of this cemetery under the sun.

  He walked back to the hotel, threw himself on the bed, and fell asleep fully dressed. At nightfall, Maria joined him in his room. They drank beer, laughing like children. She began to dance around the room with her long hair undone, after turning the music up full blast. Then she threw herself on the bed and wrapped her naked thighs around the young man’s neck. Kevin was groaning under Maria’s greedy little bites. Her voracious tongue was licking his penis and thrusting it deep into her mouth, while strangling the base of it in a fist. The pleasure was so intense that he held out his hand and grabbed the girl’s throat. She pushed him away and placed herself on top of him. He exploded in a whirlwind. When he woke up the ne
xt morning, his room had been ransacked from top to bottom. The packet of powder had disappeared too.

  Consumed with rage, he rushed down the stairs, went out the entrance like a gust of wind, and ran across boulevard d’Athènes. No one on the street paid any attention to him. Men were smoking, sitting at tables on the sidewalks. He took rue Thubaneau, dashed onto rue du Baignoir, and stumbled, panting, over a pile of blankets for sale on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to a bazaar. The shopkeeper cursed him with every word in the book. Kevin ran up rue des Petites Maries. He knew he was a dead man. Abou Salem would send his pack of killers after him. That man had zero tolerance for failure.

  Kevin’s phone rang. He ran his eyes madly over the text displayed on the screen: Berlin, Ylmaz Grocery. 22409. He was living on borrowed time now. He would not go to Berlin. His life was ending right here, in this city of white hills. He made a split-second decision: he wouldn’t wait for Abou Salem’s thugs to pick him up in some alley. I won’t let myself be Kalashed like a canary at the Foire du Trône, the young man thought. He would kill himself on Plage du Prophète. No need to explain. Smiling, Kevin imagined the selfie that would make. He clenched his fist on the box cutter in his pocket and walked toward the staircase going up to the Saint-Charles metro station.

  THE WAREHOUSE FOR PEOPLE FROM BEFORE

  by SALIM HATUBOU

  La Solidarité

  For my Comorian friend,

  the poet-gendarme Mab Elhad

  La Solidarité, a housing project in the North End of Marseille, is like a gap-toothed woman. Only a few buildings are still standing. Like a powerful cyclone, a program of the Agence Nationale pour la Rénovation Urbaine reduced some high-rises to dust and rubble while promising the tenants new apartments that must have needed a coal train to build, considering how long they’ve taken to come. This project is mine. I was born there. I grew up there. I live there.