The Lost Sailors

by Jean-Claude Izzo

  “Yes, I think so. He had a train to catch. Trains leave on time. I stayed on my own.”

  “And blew it all?”

  “Fuck, no!” He was getting irritated. He pushed away his plate and stood up. He hadn’t eaten his mackerel. “Ugh! This food is disgusting!”

  “It’s all we have to eat,” Diamantis retorted. “You’ll have to get used to it. Now, don’t get all worked up. Sit down.”

  Nedim sat down again. “Do you have a cigarette?” he asked Diamantis. “Mine are all gone.”

  He lit the cigarette, then looked at Abdul.

  “I lost track of time. I had a few more drinks and . . . Shit, I got hustled. By two girls. There. Happy? Huh?”

  “Don’t lie to me, Nedim. I’m not your father. Or your mother. Or your fiancée. You can sweet-talk them all you like, but not me. O.K.? Man to man. No bullshit.”

  Diamantis cleared his throat. Abdul looked up at him. Nedim watched the two of them. “There’s something between them,” he thought, without batting an eyelid.

  “Hey,” Nedim said. “What about that whisky? Are we drinking it or not?”

  Diamantis went to get the bottle. They drank in silence.

  “What are we going to do?” Nedim asked them.

  “How do you mean, what are we going to do?” Abdul replied.

  “I mean, for me. Shit, I’m not going to hang around here. It’s not that I don’t like the two of you, but . . . The more I listen to you, the more . . . I think you’re like the guys on the Legacy. The captain and the first mate. You’re stubborn. Have you known each other long?”

  “Quite a while,” Diamantis replied.

  “There’s nothing we can do for you, Nedim,” Abdul said. “You were given money to leave. Period. You won’t get anything else. Even if we sold the Aldebaran tomorrow, you wouldn’t be entitled to anything. You gave up all your rights.”

  “It was a rip-off!”

  “That’s not what you said yesterday.”

  “Yesterday . . .”

  “The best thing you can do,” Diamantis said, “is find a way to get home. If you need a little money, we’ll find it for you.” He looked questioningly at Abdul.

  “Yes, we’ll think of something,” he admitted reluctantly. He finished his drink and stood up. “A word of advice, Nedim. Don’t give us any trouble. I warn you. Good night. Oh, one more thing. I’m staying on board tomorrow. Work out a duty rota between the two of you for the other days.”

  “A duty rota!” Nedim exclaimed as soon as Abdul had gone out. “What’s that shit? A duty rota for what?”

  “Just a duty rota. Do as he says and don’t ask any questions.” Diamantis grabbed the bottle, and poured a decent shot for Nedim. “To see you through the night. Ciao.”

  He picked up the bottle and left.

  “Crazy people!” Nedim muttered.

  Diamantis climbed on to the main deck. Nothing had been put away. The deck was cluttered with ladders, pipes, cables, storm lamps, rigging, blowtorches, work gloves, and pots of paint. He liked it up here. He liked the smell, a real boat smell.

  The weather was fine. He sat down. He wondered if Mikis was coming to Psara for his vacation this year. He should call him to find out. He’d have liked to go fishing with his son. It had been a long time. Since he and Melina had separated, those fishing expeditions were the only times he and Mikis got together. Surrounded by the silence of the sea. Fishing brought them closer. Father and son. They didn’t need words, but when they came, they came naturally.

  “What are you searching for when you go away?” Mikis had asked him last summer.

  Diamantis had shrugged. “Nothing. Not anymore. I thought I’d find happinesss, going around the world . . . But, you know, when I think about all my years as a sailor, and all the things I can tell you about, you and everyone, I don’t know what’s true anymore. It’s all real in its way, but was that the happiness I was looking for? I don’t know!”

  Happiness, he thought now, only existed alongside pain and suffering. You realized in the end that it was only an idea. But he hadn’t said that to Mikis. He was his father, but that didn’t mean he was in possession of the truth. He might be wrong. He’d often been wrong in his life.

  Now he was sitting on his bunk. He opened the notepad containing his reflections gleaned from studying Mediter­ranean sea maps. He read them over, trying to shut out the Aldebaran.

  The reason the sea routes are not easy to define may be that they are interwoven with stories: the maps on which they are marked may have been imagined, the writings that go with them invented . . .

  He took a swig of whisky straight from the bottle. It was a question that had obsessed his father. They had talked about it a lot in the year before his death. The explorations of Pytheas, he had told him, had been disputed by many historians and geographers, especially Strabo, who didn’t believe that Pytheas had gotten as far as where “the Tropic of Cancer becomes the Arctic Circle” and where the soil is such “that it is impossible to walk on it or find your way across it.” Polybus also considered these journeys nothing but fables.

  On the other hand, according to his father, Herodotus and Pliny, who must have thought of the Earth in a similar way to Pytheas, believed him. As did Aristotle later. “You see, I think there exists a boundary between the probable and the improbable. And the great journeys crossed that boundary.”

  Diamantis told himself that this was the one truth that mattered. To find his way through life, between the probable and the improbable. To reconcile them. Not by crossing the boundary, but by being on that imaginary line and reconciling both things. So far, he hadn’t succeeded. Any more than East and West succeeded in getting along.

  There was a knock at his door. It was Nedim.

  “Sorry to bother you, but . . . There’s something else I didn’t tell you.”

  “You’re starting to piss me off, Nedim.”

  “I know. But this is important, Diamantis . . . You see, the thing is, I don’t have anything anymore. The bag with all my things in it is still in the club. To get it back, I have to give them nine hundred francs.”

  “And where do you suppose I can get hold of nine hundred francs?”

  “It’s not that, Diamantis. I was thinking . . . If you went over there, maybe that would impress the girls. And these cocktail bars aren’t necessarily aboveboard. You know that. So, if you said, for example, that you were the captain, right? They wouldn’t want to get in any trouble. You see what I mean, you go see the girls and . . . Hell, I’m not leaving them my bag!”

  “Now you really are pissing me off.”

  “I know. Hey, you don’t have another cigarette, do you? I mean, you gave me some whisky, but nothing to smoke with it.”

  “Here.”

  “Great. So?”

  “So what?”

  “So, shall we go there tomorrow?”

  “O.K., we’ll go tomorrow. It’s worth a try.”

  Nadim patted Diamantis affectionately on the shoulder, and went out.

  Diamantis gave up the idea of spending more time with his maps. He put them away carefully. But before he did so, he wrote down on his pad: The Mediterranean isn’t only a geography. It isn’t only a history. But it’s more than just a place we happen to belong to.

  Closing his eyes, he saw Mariette’s face, the two dimples when she smiled. He was glad he’d accepted her invitation. He was stifling on board the Aldebaran.

  12.

  WHO, TOMORROW, WILL BE ABLE TO SAY

  ON WHAT ISLAND CALYPSO SEDUCED ODYSSEUS?

  From where he was, Diamantis had an exceptional view over the whole harbor. From the Cap de l’Aigle, far to the south of La Ciotat, to Pointe Grenier, west of Les Lecques.

  He was leaning on the balustrade of the villa’s terrace, intoxicated by the smells coming up from the garden. A mixture
of mint and lavender. The insistent chirping of crickets filled his ears. The more his senses were aroused, the more his body relaxed. He felt a happiness, a peace he hadn’t known for a long time.

  He told himself he could die here, that it would be good to lie under the olive trees, over there at the far end of the garden. But he had already told himself the same thing, twenty years earlier, at home in Agios Nikòlaos, on the island of Psara. And he knew that was where he wanted to rest. Beside his father. It was what he’d told Melina that evening. After the funeral. Before they made love.

  They had climbed up through the fig trees, the prickly bushes, and the ruined mills with their motionless sails, to the top of the cliff. The sea and the harbor lay below them. They were bathed in sweat. They stood silently catching their breath, and looked down at the waves dying on the sand.

  “You know,” Melina had said, “this is where I can be completely myself. You see me as I am.”

  “This is where I want to die, Melina. I’ve learned to live here, on this arid ground. And to stop thinking about the future.”

  Melina had turned toward him slowly, with a grave look on her face, and kissed him. A furtive kiss at first, which had sent a quiver through him. Then it had become more passionate. Her lips tasted of salt. Like her body.

  They had gone back down at sunset. The only hour of the day when the harbor really comes to life. The hour for ouzo. The hour when men walk arm in arm with their girlfriends. He had slipped his arm through Melina’s, and they had walked along the waterfront, watched by the fishermen and goat sellers sitting at the café tables. They had announced that they were going to get married, and his mother, still tearful with grief, had cried with happiness.

  Diamantis heard voices. He turned to see Mariette walking to the gate with the preppy young couple who had been viewing the villa. There was a slamming of car doors, and then she was there. Mariette.

  “Deal done!” she cried, happily. “They’re doing the right thing. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Fantastic.”

  He couldn’t take his eyes off Mariette. She was radiant.

  “Don’t you ever want to buy the houses you sell? Like this one, I mean.”

  “Yes,” she said, leaning on the balustrade beside Diamantis. “Yes, of course. But . . . First, I don’t really have the money. Second, a house doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have a man to put in it.”

  She laughed, as if she had cracked a good joke. She was like a teenager.

  “And you don’t have a man, is that it?” he said, smiling.

  “I have a little girl, nine years old. Laure. But no daddy to go with her. How about you?”

  “I have a son. But I don’t have his mommy anymore.”

  She laughed again, an infectiously happy laugh. “So we’re quits?”

  “Quits?” He thought it over for a second. “No. Mikis is too old to need a mommy. And I’ve given up on the idea of finding a wife. Or even looking for one.”

  They looked at each other. Diamantis was knocked for six by the desire in Mariette’s sparkling eyes. She took his hand and almost ran with him off the terrace.

  “How about a swim?”

  “A swim?”

  “Didn’t you see the pool?”

  “You mean there’s a pool, too?”

  “Oh, yes, real luxury here. We have to take advantage, right? At least once in our lives.”

  They descended a few steps and walked around the house. When they got to the pool, she let go of his hand. She lowered the shoulder straps of the loose-fitting white cotton dress she was wearing. Underneath, she had on a swimsuit, also white. He didn’t have time to get a good look at her body. She dived in, arms outstretched. He watched her moving under the transparent blue water. Her head reappeared at the other end.

  “Come on in!” she called, catching her breath.

  “I don’t have any trunks. You should have warned me.”

  “I’ll close my eyes. Come on, it’s great in here!”

  He kept his underpants on. Diamantis was a modest man.

  They dried themselves half in the shade, half in the sun. Quite far from each other. Without speaking. Lost in their thoughts, their desires. He and Amina had loved going swimming. They always went out to sea. To the islands of the Frioul. Full of dozens of little creeks where they could be alone.

  They would swim for a long time, out to sea and back again, Amina clinging to his back, then climb, breathless, onto a rock, where they would kiss, Amina’s body wrapped around his, then they would sway and fall and let themselves sink to the bottom, Amina’s body intertwined with his, and come back up, rolling with the waves, still clinging to each other like limpets, exhausted now, until they reached the narrow strip of burning sand . . .

  Diamantis felt Mariette’s hot breath on his shoulder. She had moved silently toward him. He opened his eyes. She was looking at him. Her big, round breasts strained at the material of her swimsuit. They made Diamantis think of fruit, many different kinds of fruit. Pineapples, mangos, apples, pomegranates . . . He could taste them on his tongue. He rolled onto his stomach to hide his erection.

  “How about having a bite to eat?” she said. “My treat.”

  She knew a little pizzeria called L’Escalet in the harbor of La Ciotat. They walked along the waterfront arm in arm.

  “Does it bother you if I give you my arm?” she had asked him.

  No, it didn’t bother him. He liked having a woman on his arm, loved the moment when a man and a woman fall into step, as if one body.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to the huge gantries, bascule bridges, and cranes on the other side of the waterfront. “That’s all finished. One day, people will forget there were shipyards here. Everyone’s trying to turn the page. The men who used to work in the shipyards. Their wives and children, too. And the people who are moving into the area and don’t want to know.”

  “They build them in Athens now. Ships as big as the France . . .”

  “Uh-huh . . .” she said, sadly. “It’s a pity they don’t build them here anymore. This port is nothing without ships.” Then she corrected herself. “It isn’t true. I love it like this too.”

  They had stopped. He wanted to put his arm around her shoulders, but he didn’t. So many ports he knew were sinking into oblivion. There were fewer and fewer ports, fewer and fewer ships, fewer and fewer sailors. It was the same everywhere.

  He didn’t have an opinion about this. It was just an observation. There wasn’t the slightest twinge of sadness in it. He had the feeling a world was coming to an end. His world. Yes, the century was turning the page, and he was on the page that was being turned. In the new century, people would forget the very name Odysseus, he thought. He recalled how his father’s letters had been full of references to the Ancient World. We are passing the Pillars of Hercules, the headland where Antaeus died . . . Who would be able to say, tomorrow, on what island before the start of the Ocean Calypso had lived, Calypso who seduced Odysseus but couldn’t keep him?

  Curiously, that was what he and Mariette talked about over lunch. The Ancient World, not the new world. As if they were both aware that they had no future. Or, more correctly, that their future was in that past that was slipping through their fingers.

  They had sat down on the terrace of L’Escalet, under the old plane trees. Mariette had ordered a bottle of light, fruity rosé from the Lacoste estate, on the slopes outside Aix en Provence. And a huge pizza, half mozzarella, half fegatelli.

  Mariette had interrupted her literature studies when she had become pregnant with Laure. When Laure started nursery school, she thought of taking them up again. But then her husband, Regis, died of a heart attack one morning, as he was shaving. She had found him lying stiff on the tiled floor of the bathroom when she came back from dropping Laure at the nursery. She had had to forget all that, come to terms with thin
gs, carry on with her life. She had taken over Regis’s real estate agency and had made a success of it. “She’s doing quite well,” Toinou had said, proudly.

  Encouraged by the fact that Mariette was all ears, Diamantis decided to tell her about his passion for sea maps and ports.

  “The origin of a port,” he said, “reveals its qualities. Depending on whether it was built where it was because of a river, because of a coast and a hinterland, or because of the sea itself.”

  As he talked, they gazed longingly at each other. Under the table, Mariette’s knees pressed against his, burning hot. But neither of them wanted to make a move—even a small move—that would break the spell of their intimate conversation.

  “You see, it’s the way it can be approached that determines the nature of a port. Really determines it. The Atlantic and the Pacific are seas of distance. The Mediterranean, a sea of closeness. The Adriatic, a sea of intimacy.”

  “And the Aegean?”

  He smiled. The sea of love, he wanted to answer.

  “The sea that gave birth to myths. You know, Homer was born on an island, not far from mine.”

  “The island of Chios, yes, I know. You were born on Psara, then?”

  He was surprised. Not many people knew Chios. Let alone Psara.

  “Do you know the islands?”

  She shook her head, and her hair caught the sun’s rays, turning almost red. “Only through books. I’ve never left Marseilles.”

  “Didn’t you ever want to?”

  “No one ever invited me to go abroad. Not even to Corsica!”

  They both laughed.

  Diamantis wanted to talk to her about Psara. But Psara belonged to Melina. It was her image he saw whenever he went back there. On the streets, on the cliffs, or in the Valley of the Pear Trees, in the middle of the island. Melina’s presence also filled the house. The rose bushes, the orange trees, the bougainvillea in the courtyard bore witness to their past happiness. None of that should be touched, he had said to himself one morning. He had vowed never to take another woman to Psara, and he’d kept his vow.