The Lost Sailors

by Jean-Claude Izzo

  She looked him in the eyes, the way she had the previous day on the boat. He didn’t let go of her wrist, and didn’t lower his eyes.

  “A hundred dollars,” he suggested.

  Still holding her by the wrist, he dragged her out of the bar, ignoring his crew’s glances and comments.

  A hundred dollars. For a hundred dollars he’d fucked a cold, inert body. She hadn’t even simulated pleasure, like any other hooker would have done, hadn’t made a single tender gesture or spoken a single tender word, hadn’t even cracked a real smile. She had put her swimsuit back on, and then her shorts, and given him a nasty look.

  “A pity,” she’d said again.

  He’d never forgotten her. Hélène, her name was.

  “Abdul!”

  Diamantis’s voice, from the deck. He brought the neck of the bottle to his lips and let the whisky slide down his throat. Then he put the bottle down, near the wheelhouse door. That was when he saw them. Two cockroaches. Big ones. They weren’t moving. They probably sensed him. He grabbed the bottle by the neck, lifted it slowly, moved it parallel to the floor until it was directly above the cockroaches. He brought the bottom of the bottle down on them. Their shells cracked.

  “Fucking vermin,” he muttered.

  He left the bottle on them and got to his feet, propping himself on one hand. The Aldebaran was listing badly. For a moment, he leaned against the door, then took a deep breath. He suddenly realized how hot it was.

  “Abdul!”

  He walked unsteadily in the direction of Diamantis’s voice. “I’m here.”

  He didn’t recognize his own voice. It sounded as thick as his tongue was heavy.

  Diamantis joined him on the bridge. Abdul was leaning on his elbows, looking out to sea, smoking a cigarillo.

  “Ah, there you are.”

  “We always end up loving our boat, don’t we?” Abdul said, speaking slowly, articulating each word. “Any rusty old tub becomes an object of affection. Even the Aldebaran. Don’t you think?”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Is there a woman on board, Diamantis?”

  “Yes,” he replied, embarrassed, although right now he didn’t really care what Abdul thought.

  “No women on board. It’s forbidden in the regulations. You’ve forgotten the regulations.”

  “Abdul . . .”

  “Which of you picked her up? You or him? I mean, I assume she’s a hooker.”

  “Both of us. And we didn’t bring her here to fuck her. It’s a long story. We have to talk about it.”

  Abdul laughed, a high, ringing, drunken laugh. “Ah, so now you want to talk. You want to talk when it suits you, Diamantis. I wanted to talk to you earlier, but you didn’t have time. You were in a hurry. To join that hooker, I guess.”

  “She’s not a hooker.”

  He couldn’t let him say that. She wasn’t a hooker. She might even be his daughter. He couldn’t get that out of his head. And even if it wasn’t true, nothing gave him the right to be vulgar and contemptuous toward Lalla.

  “Abdul, listen to me—”

  “I don’t need to listen. I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  He rose to his full height. He still felt dizzy. The sweat was pouring off him. The damp air mingled with the fumes of alcohol inside him.

  “Where is this girl now?”

  “With Nedim. In the mess. We brought food and drink. We’re having a little party. Then we’re going to show her around the boat. She’s never been on a boat.”

  Diamantis didn’t recognize himself. He was mouthing the selfsame words Nedim had used. A little party. What idiots they were, he and Nedim. He never should have let it happen, never should have agreed to it. It was against the regulations. Above all, it was against Abdul’s principles. He should have known that, dammit!

  “A little party, huh?” Abdul put his hand on Diamantis’s shoulder. Not out of affection, but to lean on him. “A little party. Well, why not? Why not? It’s so depressing, being on a boat that won’t move. So why not, huh? A little party . . .”

  “After that, she’ll go,” Diamantis said.

  “Yes, of course.” He still had his hand on Diamantis’s shoulder. He leaned toward him. “I saw them,” he whispered. “The cockroaches.”

  He laughed, and Diamantis could smell his alcohol-laden breath. Shit, Diamantis thought, he’s really plastered. It was the first time he’d ever seen him like this, and it was a painful sight. This, he foresaw, was going to be the end of their friendship. But not only their friendship. Everything. Everything on the Aldebaran was coming to an end. He had to tell him.

  “Abdul, I have to tell you why I’m leaving.”

  Abdul laughed again, still clutching Diamantis’s shoulder. “I know, I know. For the same reason I’m staying. We’ve lost everything we didn’t need anymore.” He continued laughing. “That’s the truth, my friend.” Then he became serious and looked at Diamantis. “Look,” he said, pointing to the open sea. “We’ve sailed all our lives, and for what? We didn’t find anything. Not on this side of the horizon. Or on the other. Nothing. So?”

  “There’s nothing to find. That’s the truth, Abdul. Nothing to look for. Nothing to find. And nothing to prove.”

  “You’re too much of a philosopher, Diamantis. No, we have to answer the questions of life. And solve them. Because they’re asked of all of us, of all men. And we are men, aren’t we?”

  Diamantis felt an overwhelming need for alcohol, too. He wanted to drink. To drink and have a party. To sleep with a woman. He remembered Mariette’s round face. Her smile. The plains and hills of her body. The peaceful atmosphere of her apartment. The sweetness of life . . . Life. Real life, maybe.

  “That’s crap, Abdul. Bullshit. What do you mean solve? Huh? There’s no solution to anything, ever.”

  “Right. Let’s drink to that.”

  He let go of Diamantis’s shoulder. He didn’t feel dizzy anymore. He looked at him again, with a feeling of pity this time. A man who’s afraid of cockroaches, he thought.

  “What’s the girl’s name?”

  “Lalla.”

  “Lalla. Arab, huh?”

  “Moroccan.”

  He left Diamantis and went to his cabin. A party, eh? He would show them. He took out his summer uniform and started dressing. In his mind, Lalla was looking more and more like Hélène. Only he could say if she was really like her. But he didn’t say it. He only knew, as he shook her hand, that she had the same look about her.

  24.

  EVERYONE CARRIES WITHIN HIM

  HIS SHARE OF UNHAPPINESS

  If . . .” Abdul Aziz cleared his throat, then resumed reading. “If when you place your hand on the ship’s rail—”“What’s the ship’s rail?” Lalla asked.

  “The guardrail,” Diamantis said.

  She looked at Nedim.

  “To stop you falling overboard.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “May I continue?” Abdul asked. “Good. If when you put your hand on the ship’s rail, you feel something like the contact of a living thing responding to your touch, something really tangible, then you are in the ideal frame of mind to become a genuine expert navigator.” He raised his eyes from the book, looked at Lalla, and continued. “If you have talent, sound judgment, an eye for distances, and a generally calm and unemotional nature . . .”

  He closed the book. The Naval Officer’s Manual, by Captain H. A. V. Pflugk. A book he never let out of his sight. He had picked it up in a second-hand bookstore in London, about fifteen years ago. He guessed some of the observations might seem a little old-fashioned nowadays, but they suited him fine. They were sound.

  “That’s it,” he said. “That’s what I felt when I sailed on my first ship. The Hope. I already told you about it, didn’t I, Diamantis?”

  On t
he table, they had spread all the things they’d bought before coming, from the food shops on Rue d’Aubagne, the most cosmopolitan street in Marseilles. Cod croquettes, red-pepper salad, meat briquats, calves’ brain fritters, chakchouka, fish fritters, bean salad, eggplant caviar, cheese feuillètes, tabouleh, cucumbers with yoghurt, tomato-and-pepper omelette, stuffed vine leaves, calamari in Salonica sauce, moussaka. And, of course, green and black olives, almonds, cashew nuts, roasted pistachios, and chickpea purée. Several bottles of wine, too. A white from Cassis, a rosé from Bandol, and a few bottles of an Italian red called Lacrima-Christi, which Diamantis was particularly fond of.

  When they sat down to eat, even though they weren’t at home, they were on common ground. All from the same country. The Mediterranean. Forgetting who they were, why they were here, on this boat, on a summer night in Marseilles. They had been thrown together by chance, one of those chances by which exiles, constantly passing without meeting, at last converge on a place where happiness and unhappiness become one. The end of the world was here. On the Aldebaran.

  Diamantis had done most of the talking at the beginning of the meal, although it was Nedim who had started.

  “Can you imagine?” he had said to Lalla, laughing. “I’m a Turk and he’s a Greek. We hate each other, and how! Sit down for a meal with a Greek? Me? Never. Besides, our stuffed vine leaves are better!”

  “You’re kidding yourself, my friend,” Abdul cut in. “These are Lebanese. You can tell by the taste.”

  Diamantis laughed. “What’s more, it’s true.”

  Diamantis had talked about the thing that was closest to his heart. The Mediterranean. For him, this sea was both eastern and western. But it was one. Indivisible.

  “Indivisible, right? The West, the East, that’s . . . just a myth. Our countries, our roots, our culture, it’s all here, on this sea.” He looked in turn at Nedim, Lalla, and Abdul. “Do you follow me?”

  They nodded, but Diamantis could see from their eyes that they were confused. In fact, so was he. It was clear in his mind, but not when he put it into words. It was the first time he’d risked doing it. Up until then, all these things had been part of his world. Constantly going through his head. Sometimes, he would try to catch one of these thoughts and write it down, as best he could, in one of his notebooks.

  He took a long sip of white wine. To help him clarify his ideas. Wine was invaluable for that. Its fragrance spread through him, giving flesh to his abstract words. He was in a state of euphoria that was close to intoxication. And he wasn’t the only one.

  Ever since he’d joined them, Abdul had been navigating without instruments through an alcohol-induced fog. Whenever his glass was empty, he would refill it, but never served the others. He was drinking coldly, deliberately, with as much determination as if he was in charge of a ship. He was stiff. Stiff in his head and in his body. He sat upright in his chair, making sure he controlled his every gesture. He was like an automaton.

  Nedim had drunk quite a lot, too, but less than Diamantis, let alone Abdul. He had realized immediately that Abdul was already plastered when they had found him in the mess. The uniform was proof of that! The presence of Lalla prevented Nedim from going too far, getting as drunk as Diamantis and Abdul. He didn’t want to be drunk at the end of the night. He’d had benders before. Every place he’d been. And it always ended the same way. Either he’d get in a brawl. Or he’d fuck a whore. Without remembering who he’d fought, or why. Without remembering what the girl had looked like, or how much she’d cheated him out of. The only thing he knew for certain was that eventually he’d find himself leaning against a wall, puking his guts out. And that wasn’t something he wanted Lalla to see.

  He gently placed his hand on Lalla’s thigh, under the table. She put her hand on his. Their fingers joined. She turned to him and smiled. Then she took her hand off his, and he took his hand off her thigh.

  Of the four of them, Lalla was surely the most clear-headed. She didn’t really understand what had been happening since Amina had sent her to find Diamantis. But she wasn’t trying to understand. She let herself be carried along by events. Diamantis and Abdul Aziz fascinated her. Of course, they were starting to get plastered, but they struck her as the kind of men she’d never met before. Men who lived their lives to the full. With a strength, a spontaneity, a truth she’d never known. They were different from Ricardo and his men. Different from the customers she saw every night. She didn’t know anything about men, she’d been thinking when Nedim’s hand came to rest on her thigh.

  What about him? she wondered. She didn’t understand him. But she couldn’t deny that they’d hit it off from the moment he had taken her in his arms to dance. In fact, they’d hit it off really well. It had been more than just the physical excitement generated by the salsa. Was it possible to feel so close to a guy from the first moment you saw him, the first moment he touched your hand? If Amina hadn’t been there, she would have left the Habana with Nedim and gone to a hotel. She had come close to saying yes when Nedim had suggested it. Just to feel her body being carried away by his. The only times she had slept with a man—and she could count them on the fingers of one hand—she had been disappointed. Men took, they never gave. Afterwards, she had felt curiously empty. As if they’d been firing blanks.

  For Amina, Nedim had been just another asshole to be fleeced. She’d forced him to spend an excessive amount. Almost out of spite. Maybe because he was a good dancer. Or maybe because he and Lalla looked good together. Something like that. An old jealousy. Or a wound that hadn’t yet healed. That was what Lalla had told herself later, lying in bed, thinking about Nedim. And she had wondered, once again, why Amina had acted like that. Nedim was no better and no worse than anyone else. Just more lost. At a glance, both of them had calculated the money they could get him to cough up. “You should hook up with that one,” Amina had said, pointing to Nedim, who was dancing alone. “That one’s a real lost sailor.”

  Lalla turned her attention back to Diamantis. She didn’t really understand what he was talking about. Or what he was driving at. But she felt that what he was saying was basically right.

  “You could say, look, the Mediterranean is our body. I agree. We have two eyes to see properly, two ears to hear well, two nostrils to smell better, two lips to speak . . .”

  “Two arms, two legs . . .” Abdul said ironically.

  “Exactly.”

  “And a cock . . .” Nedim said.

  “Bravo,” Diamantis retorted. “If someone was going to think about that, it had to be you.”

  “Wait, wait,” Nedim said, as serious as he had ever been. “I wasn’t thinking . . . I was just pointing out that we have one cock, not two, and . . .”

  He searched for the words. He understood Diamantis’s explanation. He even liked it. He thought it was well founded.

  “And what is this body, male or female?”

  “The Mediterranean is androgynous.”

  “Androgynous?” Lalla asked. She thought she knew what the word meant, but she wasn’t sure. Even if it meant looking stupid, she wanted to set her mind at rest.

  “Belonging to both sexes,” Abdul said.

  He said it in an unfriendly tone. This girl was exactly what she appeared to be, a bimbo. Good for a fuck, definitely good for a fuck, but deadly dull. He downed his drink in one go, and poured himself another. He had started on the red wine, while the others were still on the rosé.

  The girl was just like Hélène. The two of them had their brains in their asses. And they both thought that gave them the right to humiliate you. Nedim was just a loser. He didn’t understand that. The more Abdul looked at Lalla, the more she reminded him of Hélène. He could hear her saying, “A pity” in her poor schoolgirl English.

  Lalla caught the look Abdul threw her. A severe look. The man clearly didn’t like her. There was a gleam of hatred in his eyes, hatred toward her. No one ha
d ever looked at her like that. She didn’t know why, but all her senses went on alert.

  “The Mediterranean is neutral in the Slavonic languages, and in Latin. It’s masculine in Italian. Feminine in French. Sometimes masculine, sometimes feminine in Spanish. It has two masculine names in Arabic. And Greek has many names for it, in different genders.”

  “Why is that?” Lalla asked.

  “I don’t know. It may have something to do with everyone’s own bias. But I think the Mediterranean is like a body inside us. And that what our right hand does, our left hand can’t ignore.”

  He stopped suddenly, lost in thought. The alcohol was making him lose the thread. What had started him off on all this? What was he trying to explain, to demonstrate?

  “I’ve forgotten what I wanted to say.”

  “You were talking about the Odyssey,” Nedim said. “Homer’s Odyssey.”

  “About Odysseus,” Abdul said.

  “Yes . . . In fact, the Odyssey has constantly been retold, in every tavern or bar . . . And Odysseus is still alive among us. Eternally young, in the stories we tell, even now. If we have a future in the Mediterranean, that’s where it lies.”

  He stopped again. That still wasn’t what he wanted to say. It was something more specific.

  “The Mediterranean means . . . routes. Sea routes and land routes. All joined together. Connecting cities. Large and small. Cities holding each other by the hand. Cairo and Marseilles, Genoa and Beirut, Istanbul and Tangier, Tunis and Naples, Barcelona and Alexandria, Palermo and . . .”

  He finally found the idea that had been nagging at him, and the words to express it.

  “The fact is, we need a personal reason to sail the Mediterranean.”

  That was it. He’d found it. A personal reason.

  Abdul stared at him. Diamantis was raving. A personal reason. Bullshit. No, he wasn’t raving. He was talking bullshit just to make them listen to him. He wanted to enthrall them. To be the center of attention. He had been monopolizing the conversation since the beginning of the meal. And he, Abdul, had been reduced to a walk-on part. Not everything Diamantis was saying was wrong. But dammit, he was the captain. He also had things to say.