He had a second cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette, then leaned on the edge of the table to help himself to stand. Like an old man. He felt old. He dragged himself into the living room, and went to the stereo. He needed music. Santana, Bob Dylan, Khaled, Verdi, Tito Puente, the Rolling Stones . . . Mariette had eclectic tastes. He liked that. He found what he was looking for. Gianmaria Testa. His voice filled the apartment.
Io ti parlavo e tu eri già partito
E quello che dicevo non lo ascoltavi più.
La musica, il bicchiere le altre sere
Ti avrebbero legato qui ma non adesso.
Ti sento addosso e non ci sei . . .
Cradled by the music, Diamantis fell asleep trying to understand the words. Ti sento addosso e non ci sei . . . I feel you all over me and you aren’t there . . . You aren’t there. Why aren’t you there? Who isn’t there? When he opened his eyes, he saw Mariette’s face. The face of an angel, soft and round. Haloed by that luminous mass of hair. An apparition. She was smiling at him. The shutters were more open now. A ray of sunlight filtered into the room. Mariette glowed against the light.
He smiled at her. Then his eyelids closed again, involuntarily. His head was still heavy. His body must have been heavy, too, but he couldn’t feel it anymore. The pain had made it leaden. He was sweaty.
“How are you feeling?” he heard her ask.
He needed to wake up. Maybe if she put her hand on his forehead, it would help. Would do him good. Would stop the sweat trickling down his temples.
He nodded without replying and smiled at her again.
“You’re very hot,” she said, putting her hand on his forehead. The hand felt cool and light. Mariette was an oasis. He let the coolness spread through his body.
“I’m thirsty,” he said.
And his eyes closed again.
She helped him to take a shower. She soaped him, rinsed him, wiped him. His body was covered in bruises. Under the almost cold jet of water, life gradually came back to him. Things fell back into place. And the questions started to flood into his head again, just as the blood started coursing again through his veins, or into the pit of his cock when Mariette’s soapy hands moved from his stomach to his groin. She had gentle hands. He got a slight hard-on. He wanted her fingers to linger there for a few more moments. Or longer than that, if possible. But she made him turn around, unconcerned about his hard-on, and made no comment.
He told Mariette the whole story as he drank coffee. He was dressed in new clothes. She had bought him beige cotton pants, a white T-shirt, and even underpants.
“It’s not easy to get blood off clothes,” she’d said.
She thought he was a handsome man. Even with that purple patch, turning almost black now, under his eye.
“I must be a terrible sight.”
She laughed, stood up, went out, came back with a large pair of sunglasses, and put them on his nose. “There. Now you’re really handsome!”
She laughed again, and her laugh infected him. A moment of joy, another moment snatched from life. Life, which was there, outside, waiting impatiently for Diamantis to return. So that it could grab him all over again. With its questions, its doubts. Its laws and rules. Because you can’t leave life in the lurch. A door always has to be opened or closed. He wondered what he should do. Open the door, to find out what he had left behind? Or close the door behind him forever? What did he want? He wasn’t sure anymore. Take the blows? Get another beating? Or kill someone, maybe. Did Amina even remember him? Twenty years. Did he have to retrace his steps? And why? To confess that he had fled because he was scared to death. And tell her . . . Tell her what? “Look, I’m sorry about all this. I have my life now. You have yours.” Was he doing it for her or for him? And what about her? What did he expect her to say? “I forgive you, Diamantis. You can’t argue with the fear of death.” Wasn’t that what he was expecting? Just that. Her forgiveness. And once he was absolved, it didn’t matter to him how many men fucked her.
No. The questions bristled in his head.
Love means commitment, he thought. Amina had given him a lot. She’d given him everything. Her body and her dreams. She had believed in him. She had trusted him. She had placed her hopes in him. They hadn’t only fucked. With the impatience of desire, they had started to build something.
He was the second man Amina had slept with. She’d told him that quite openly. The first man who’d fucked her—that was how she’d put it, in a blank, uninflected voice—didn’t count. She had refused to talk about him. One day, maybe. On the boat taking him away from her, he had wondered if the guy who had taken her virginity might be her father. Or his pal the paratrooper. Or a friend of the paratrooper’s.
No. He couldn’t. Turning the page meant accepting that he hadn’t loved her. Love required courage, too. Twenty years didn’t make any difference. There was only the truth of feelings. His love. True or false.
His temples started throbbing. All these questions had brought the pain back. He could feel it moving up his spine, like an army of ants. It would go all the way up to his head, and he’d start to feel the blows again, inside. He had to make up his mind.
“What do you think I should do?” he asked Mariette finally.
She looked him up and down. She wasn’t smiling now. She was very serious. “Do you really want me to tell you?”
She had listened to his story and understood all the things that were troubling him. She was moved by him. He was a strong man. Even his doubts didn’t detract from his strength. He might wander, but he never took his eyes off the course he had fixed for himself. She remembered his description of Odysseus when they were talking in the pizzeria yesterday. “Driven by a quiet heroism appropriate to a world that is perfectly human.”
Diamantis had something of Odysseus about him. He seemed to live his own tragedy to the full. Because he was basically free. And tragedy always began with the assertion of freedom.
She answered him in exactly the way he didn’t want to hear. Or couldn’t hear anymore. She said, with all the love for him that she felt growing in her, “Forget the past, Diamantis. Drop it. That’s what I think you should do. And I also think you should leave that ship. What the hell does it matter to you? If you want to go back to sea, go back to sea. But don’t stay on board that ship, brooding.”
She put all her tenderness into these words. Trying to convince herself, as she spoke, that he would listen to her, that he would say, “Yes, you’re right.” Then she added, because that was also something that had to be said, “You can stay here. It won’t be any problem. Stay as long as you like. Laure and I will manage,” she added, to put him at its ease. “She can sleep with me, and you can use her room.”
“You’re right,” he said.
He knew she was right.
“Yes, you’re right.”
She didn’t believe him.
“But . . . I have to go back to the ship. They must be worried.”
His eyes avoided Mariette’s for a moment. But there was no point, he thought. He shouldn’t lie to her. He looked straight at her.
“I’m not sure yet, Mariette. I’m not sure.”
“I’ll drive you over there.”
She drove him as far as the checkpoint.
“Will you be O.K.?” she asked, opening the door for him.
They hadn’t spoken since they’d gotten in the car.
“Five hundred yards,” he said, trying to make a joke of it. “I’ll survive.”
Then he took her arm and drew her aside. “It’s that one over there, you see? The Aldebaran. It looks like any other freighter. No better, no worse. It’s my only real home in the world. At least for today. There’ll be another one tomorrow . . .”
He turned to look at her. She was beautiful. Not like Amina. Or Melina. He might not even have noticed her on the street, if he hadn’t known Toino
u, if he hadn’t looked into her eyes the other afternoon. But standing here in front of him, with the emotion of the moment overwhelming her, and her eyes that didn’t flinch, in spite of everything, yes, here and now, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met.
He took her in his arms and buried his face in her hair. There was the same smell in her hair that he had breathed in all night on his pillow. A smell that already belonged to him.
“I’ve heard everything you said, Mariette . . . But I don’t know . . . I really don’t know . . . I need . . .”
She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at the Aldebaran. As if it might take to sea.
Again, Diamantis made an attempt at a joke. “You have my dirty clothes as security, even my underpants!”
He quickly freed himself from her, kissed her furtively on the lips, and walked toward the checkpoint. Without turning around.
He showed the watchman the card giving him access to the harbor. The young man stared at him. His eyes came to rest on Diamantis’ sunglasses, and the purple mark.
“Diamantis,” he said.
Diamantis lifted his glasses to give him a real eyeful.
“Nice,” he said, and added, “I have a message for you.”
He handed him a small white envelope. Inside was a visiting card. On it, a scrawled message. 2 P.M. I’m at the Flots-Bleus, Prophète Beach. Until seven. Come. Amina. Amina. His heart started pounding. He turned and saw Mariette’s car drive away.
The watchman hadn’t taken his eyes off him.
“When were you given this?”
“Less than an hour ago.”
“By a woman?”
Just to know if Amina had come all the way here. He was angry at himself already for having missed her.
“A young woman. Arab, something like that.” The watchman winked conspiratorially. “Really nice figure.”
Diamantis was disappointed. “Thanks,” he said, thinking hard. “A young woman? How young?”
“Twenty at the most. Your friend seemed to know her.”
“My friend?”
“You know, the Turk. The one who came back. He even went off with her.”
Diamantis was completely at a loss. “Wait a minute. Tell me that again, slowly.”
17.
STILL A LONG WAY FROM THE GATE OF FELICITY
Lalla was quite pleased with herself. True, she was only bringing back Nedim, but the other guy, Diamantis, the one Gaby was so eager to see, would be sure to show up when he saw her message. At least, that was what Lalla had hoped would happen. She wasn’t so sure now. Nedim had just told her that Diamantis hadn’t been back during the night.
“If you want my opinion, he’s found himself a girl. If that’s the case, he won’t be back tonight, either. But we don’t need him, do we?”
He glanced at Lalla. In profile she was just as sexy as full face. That was rare. A good profile was important in a woman. He’d known so many women who, as soon as they turned their heads, revealed a huge nose or a protruding chin. But Lalla’s profile was perfect from top to bottom, and Nedim couldn’t stop looking at it. This girl deserved better than the dim lighting of a night club.
He was especially drawn to her thighs. She was wearing an extremely short, tight-fitting black skirt. Whenever she moved her legs, to brake or disengage the clutch, it sent shivers down his spine. He was dying to put his hands on them. But he reasoned with himself. Shit, just because she had come to find him didn’t mean he could do what he liked. Later, maybe. In fact, he was sure of it. He was convinced he would have her eventually. And that nutcase Abdul Aziz could shove his dominoes up his ass tonight.
They had played three more games, drinking whisky. Nedim had lost all three.
“How about piping down for a while, huh?” Abdul had said.
Nedim talked too much, which made it hard for him to concentrate. But it was Nedim’s nature, dammit. “If we don’t talk, what the hell’s the point of having a tongue?” he’d wanted to answer. But he’d kept his mouth shut. Abdul was playing to win and Nedim to talk. Two worlds that would never meet. That was why Abdul was so gullible. He didn’t speak a lot and thought too much.
“Why don’t you get out of here?” he couldn’t help asking him.
They were starting the fourth game.
“Because,” Abdul replied.
“And what does your wife think of you hanging around here?”
“You’re pissing me off, Nedim! Do I ask you questions?”
“Well, that’s just it . . . If you did ask me, I’d tell you the shit I’m in. It’s true! Hell, I even phoned my mother. I’m coming back, I said. It’s over, mum, I won’t leave again. You understand? So now the whole village is waiting for me. Especially my fiancée . . .”
“You could have been there by now, Nedim.”
“Yes . . . I agree. But I’m not. So what do I do now? I’m asking you. You really don’t think I’m going to clear that fucking pile of shit on deck, do you? No fucking way . . .”
He had grabbed the bottle and filled both their glasses.
“Listen,” he had said, leaning over the dominoes. “We can cheat a bit. Say I got robbed, by Arabs, something like that . . .”
“Arabs?”
“Whatever. You know what I mean. We’ll make up something. Then they give me a little money, or a train ticket, and I get out of here. Bye-bye, Nedim. Simple as that.”
A train ticket, his hundred dollars, three or four hundred francs he could screw out of Abdul Aziz if he played the idiot to the hilt, and maybe as much from Diamantis by crying on his shoulder. With that he could go back to the village without looking like too much of a loser. He’d show the dollars to his mother, and Aysel and her father, and his friends. Everyone would think he was rolling in it. They’d take him seriously. It was a good plan.
Abdul hadn’t replied, the fucking dingbat.
“Play” was all he’d said. “Play, and shut up.”
“Where are we going?” he asked Lalla when they reached the Vieux-Port and she turned onto Quai de Rive Neuve, heading for the Corniche.
“We’re meeting Gaby in a bar. Hey, you’re not very talkative today.”
Nedim laughed out loud. For once he was quiet, and he was being criticized for it. By a girl, to make matters worse! That was the last straw. Now he’d heard everything.
“Could I have a cigarette?”
Lalla’s cigarettes and lighter were on her lap.
“Help yourself,” she said.
He immediately had a hard-on. Of course, when he put the pack of cigarettes back on her lap, Nedim couldn’t stop his fingers from brushing against the top of her thigh. Lalla smiled. She could do anything she wanted with this guy. She understood why Gaby had been so eager to have him.
“If Diamantis isn’t there, fetch the other one, Nedim. And leave a message for Diamantis, so he can find us.”
Lalla hadn’t asked any questions. She had showed up at gate 3A, in her tiny skirt, her blouse slightly open, all smiles for the watchman. Leaning over the desk so he could get as much of an eyeful of her breasts as possible, she said she wanted to speak to Diamantis, a sailor on the Aldebaran. It was quite urgent.
“Diamantis is a first mate, not a sailor. And he isn’t there. There’s only one sailor on board. The captain left a while ago. Is it to do with the crew?”
Lalla had lit a cigarette, her eyes fixed on him. When she took a long drag at her cigarette like that, she was irresistible. A guy had told her that once, and she had no reason to doubt it.
“What’s your first name?”
“Vincent,” he replied. He was getting excited, and his eyes kept moving from Lalla’s lips to her blouse.
“All right, Vincent, can I talk to Taksim? Nedim Taksim?”
“The Turkish guy?”
“That’s
right.”
“Well . . .”
“It’s urgent, Vincent. Since Diamantis isn’t here . . .”
He had locked the barrier, got in his company car, a Renault 5, and driven off to find Nedim.
“If anyone comes, tell them I’ll be back soon.”
“Don’t worry, Vincent.”
She could have let ten trucks come in and empty all the containers in the harbor. The thought of it made her smile.
As she drove, Lalla was thinking of Gaby. She hadn’t been the same since Diamantis had turned up at the Habana. More nervous, more distracted. Distant. Lost in thought. That wasn’t like her. She knew how to wear men down and make them pay. Coldly, like a technician. In Nedim, she had seen the perfect sucker, at first glance.
She had taken a step back. “Oh, my God!”
“What’s the matter?” Lalla had asked.
Gaby had collapsed onto a chair, in a state of shock. “The guy out there. With Doug.”
Lalla had gone to check out the man, discreetly, then had come back to Gaby, who was puffing furiously at a cigarette.
“Who is he?”
“A guy I loved a long time ago. He probably doesn’t even remember me.”
“What of it?”
“What of it? You don’t realize, Lalla. We hustle some asshole, and I bump into him. Diamantis.”
No, Lalla didn’t realize. “What did this guy do to you?”
“What did he do to me?”
Gaby eyes had a distant look in them. She was remembering that happy, all too brief time when her name was still Amina. Or rather, one particular moment. When Diamantis had gently lifted the sweat shirt she wore next to her skin. His fingers had caressed her stomach with such tenderness, she couldn’t feel her body anymore. Then he had entered her. An eternity later. And she had known that she belonged to him forever. Her life since then had been full of rottenness, but in her heart she had remained faithful to that moment.
“Take me away,” she had whispered in Diamantis’s ear. “Take me away.”
The Lost Sailors Page 14
