Solea

by Jean-Claude Izzo

  “Pronto.”

  Babette had hung up. It wasn’t Beppe’s voice. Then she’d seen the carabinieri arrive in two cars that drew up on the main street. She knew immediately what had happened: the killers had gotten there before her.

  She had turned around and gone back the way she had come, along a narrow, twisting mountain road. Hands tight on the wheel, exhausted, but keeping her eyes open for any cars about to overtake her or coming toward her.

  “Come,” Bruno had said.

  She’d found a seedy room in the Hotel Firenze e Continentale, near the station. She hadn’t slept a wink all night. The trains. The presence of death. It all kept coming back to her, down to the smallest detail. A taxi had dropped her on Campo de’ Fiori. Gianni had just come back from Palermo. He was waiting for her in his apartment. Ten days is a long time, he’d said on the phone. It had been a long time for her, too. She didn’t know if she loved Gianni, but her whole body yearned for him.

  “Gianni! Gianni!”

  The door was open, but that hadn’t worried her.

  “Gianni!”

  He was there. Tied to a chair. Naked. Dead. She closed her eyes, but too late. She knew she would have to live with that image.

  When she’d opened her eyes again, she’d seen the burn marks on his chest, stomach and thighs. No, she didn’t want to look. She turned her eyes away from Gianni’s mutilated cock. She started screaming. She saw herself screaming, her body frozen rigid, her arms dangling, her mouth wide open. Her screams swelled with the smell of blood, shit and piss that filled the room. When she couldn’t breathe anymore, she threw up. At Gianni’s feet. Where someone had written in chalk on the wooden floor: Present for Mademoiselle Bellini. See you later.

  Gianni’s older brother Francesco was murdered the morning she left Orvieto. Beppe before she arrived in Manarola.

  From now on, she was a hunted woman.

  Bruno had been waiting for her at the bus stop in Saint-Jean-du-Gard. This was how she’d gotten there: train from La Spezia to Ventimiglia, rental car through the little border post at Menton, another train to Nîmes, then a bus. Just to be on the safe side. She didn’t really think they were following her. They’d be waiting for her in her apartment in Marseilles. That was the logical thing to do. And everything the Mafia did had its own implacable logic. She’d seen plenty of evidence of that over the past two years.

  Just before they got to Le Castellas, at a point where the road overhangs the valley, Bruno had stopped his old jeep.

  “Come on, let’s go for walk.”

  They’d walked to the cliff edge. You could just about see Le Castellas, about two miles farther up, at the end of a dirt track. It was as far as you could go.

  “You’re safe here. If anyone comes up, Michel, the park ranger, calls me. And if someone was coming along the ridge, Daniel would tell me. We’re still the same, I call four times a day, he calls four times a day. If one of us doesn’t call when he’s supposed to, it means something’s wrong. When Daniel’s tractor overturned, that was how I found out.”

  Babette had looked at him, unable to say a word. Not even thank you.

  “And don’t feel you’re obliged to tell me what kind of trouble you’re in.”

  Bruno had taken her in his arms, and she had started crying.

  Babette shivered. The sun had gone down, and the mountains stood out purple against the sky. She carefully stubbed out her cigarette butt with her foot, stood up, and walked down towards Le Castellas. Soothed by the daily miracle of sunset.

  In her room, she read over the long letter she’d written to Fabio. In it, she’d told him everything that had happened since she’d arrived in Rome two years earlier. Including how it had ended. How desperate she was. But also how determined. She’d see it through to the end. She’d publish the results of her investigation. In a newspaper, or as a book. Everything has to come out into the open, she’d written.

  She was still thinking of that beautiful sunset, and wanted to end the letter with it. She wanted to tell Fabio that, in spite of everything, the sun was more beautiful over the sea, no, not more beautiful but more real, no, that wasn’t it either, what she wanted was to be with him in his boat, off Riou, watching the sun melt into the sea.

  She tore up the letter. She took a new sheet of paper and wrote I still love you. Beneath it, she wrote Take good care of this for me, put five computer disks in a padded envelope, sealed it and stood up. It was time for dinner with Bruno and his family.

  1.

  IN WHICH WHAT PEOPLE HAVE ON THEIR MINDS

  IS CLEARER THAN WHAT THEY SAY WITH

  THEIR TONGUES

  Life stank of death.

  That’s what I’d been thinking last night, walking into Hassan’s bar, the Maraîchers. It wasn’t just one of those vague ideas you get in your head sometimes. No, I really felt death around me. The rotten putrid smell of it. I’d sniffed my arm, and the smell disgusted me. It was the same smell. I also stank of death. “Take it easy, Fabio,” I’d told myself. “Go home, take a shower, calm down, take the boat out. A nice cool sea breeze and everything will be fine, you’ll see.”

  The fact is, it was hot. In the upper eighties. The air was a viscous mixture of humidity and pollution. Marseilles was stifling. Easy to work up a thirst. So instead of going straight home through the Vieux-Port and along the Corniche—the most direct route to Les Goudes, where I lived—I’d turned onto the narrow Rue Curiol, at the end of the Canebière. The Bar des Maraîchers was right at the top of the street, near Place Jean Jaurès.

  It felt good to be in Hassan’s bar. There were no barriers of age, sex, color or class among the regulars there. We were all friends. You could be sure no one who came there for a pastis voted for the National Front, or ever had. Not even once, unlike some people I knew. Everyone in this bar knew why they were from Marseilles and not somewhere else, why they lived in Marseilles and not somewhere else. Friendship hung in the air, along with the fumes of anise. We only had to exchange glances to know we were all the children of exiles. There was something reassuring about that. We had nothing to lose, because we’d already lost everything.

  When I came in, Léo Ferré was singing:

  I sense the arrival

  of trains full of Brownings,

  Berettas and black flowers

  And florists preparing bloodbaths

  For the news on color TV . . .

  I’d had a pastis at the bar, and Hassan had refilled it, as usual. After that, I’d lost count of how many pastis I had. At one point, maybe when I was on my fourth, Hassan had leaned towards me.

  “Don’t you think working class people are a bit clumsy?”

  It wasn’t a question. It was just an observation. A statement. Hassan wasn’t the talkative type. But he liked to come out with little phrases like that to whoever was at the bar. Like a maxim to be pondered.

  “What am I supposed to say to that?” I’d replied.

  “Nothing. There’s nothing to say. We do what we can. That’s all. Come on, finish your drink.”

  The bar had gradually filled up, sending the temperature several degrees higher. Some people went outside to drink, but it wasn’t much better there. Night had fallen, but there still wasn’t a hint of coolness. The mugginess was overwhelming.

  I’d gone out on the sidewalk to talk with Didier Perez. He’d come in to Hassan’s and as soon as he saw me had come straight up to me.

  “Just the man I wanted to see.”

  “You’re in luck. I was planning to go fishing.”

  “Shall we go outside?”

  It was Hassan who’d introduced me to Perez one night. Perez was a painter. Fascinated by the magic of signs. We were the same age. His parents, originally from Almeria, had emigrated to Algeria after Franco’s victory. That’s where he was born. When Algeria became independent, none of the family had to thin
k about what their nationality was. They would be Algerians.

  Perez had left Algiers in 1993. A teacher at the School of Fine Arts, he was also one of the leaders of the Federation of Algerian Artists, Intellectuals and Scientists. When the death threats became more specific, his friends advised him to go away for a while. He’d been in Marseilles barely a week when he learned that the principal and his son had been murdered inside the school. He decided to stay in Marseilles, with his wife and children.

  The thing that had immediately drawn me to him was his passion for the Tuareg. I didn’t know the desert, but I knew the sea. To me, they were the same. We’d talked a lot about that. About the earth and the sea, the dust and the stars. One evening, he gave me a delicately moulded ring.

  “It’s from over there. The combination of points and lines is called the Khaten. It tells you what’s going to happen to those you love who’ve gone away, and also what’s going to happen to you in the future.” Perez had placed the ring in the palm of my hand.

  “I think I’d rather not know.”

  He had laughed. “Don’t worry, Fabio. You have to know how to read the signs. The Khat al R’mel. Whatever it is, it’s not going to happen in a hurry! But if it’s written, it’s written.”

  I’d never worn a ring in my life. Not even my father’s, after he died. I’d hesitated for a moment, then I’d put the ring on the fourth finger of my left hand. As if to seal my fate once and for all. That night, I’d thought, I was finally old enough.

  Out on the sidewalk, with our glasses in our hands, we’d talked about this and that, then Perez had put his arm around my shoulder. “I need to ask you a favor.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m expecting someone from Algeria. Could he stay with you? It’ll only be for a week. My place isn’t big enough.”

  He looked straight at me with his dark eyes. My place wasn’t all that much bigger. The cottage I’d inherited from my parents had only two rooms. A small bedroom and a big dining room cum kitchen. I’d refurbished the place as best I could. I’d kept things simple, not too much furniture. I felt good there. The terrace looked out onto the sea. At the bottom of a flight of eight steps was the boat, with a pointed stern, that I’d bought from Honorine, my neighbor. Perez knew that. I’d invited him and his wife and friends over for a meal several times.

  “I’d feel safe, knowing he was with you,” he said.

  Now I looked at him. “Of course, Didier. When’s he coming?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in a week. I really don’t know. It’s all a bit complicated. I’ll call you.”

  After he’d left, I’d gone back to my place at the bar and drunk with whoever was around, and with Hassan who was always happy to join in. I listened to the conversations. The music, too. Once the aperitif hour was over, Hassan would abandon Ferré for jazz. He always chose the tracks carefully. As if trying to find a sound to fit the mood of every moment. Death, the smell of it, was receding. No doubt about it, I preferred the smell of anise.

  “I prefer the smell of anise,” I’d yelled at Hassan.

  I was starting to get slightly drunk.

  “Sure.”

  He’d winked at me. He was a real friend. Miles Davis had launched into “Solea.” I loved that track. I’d been playing it constantly, at night, ever since Lole had left me.

  “The solea,” she’d explained one evening, “is the backbone of flamenco singing.”

  “Why don’t you sing? Flamenco, jazz . . .”

  I knew she had a great voice. A cousin of hers named Pedro had told me. But Lole had always refused to sing outside family gatherings.

  “I haven’t yet found what I’m looking for,” she’d replied, after a long silence. The same silence you had to find at the most intense moment of the solea. “You should have understood that by now, Fabio.”

  “What should I have understood?”

  She’d smiled sadly.

  It was in the last few weeks of our life together. One of those nights when we’d tired ourselves out talking until the early hours, chain smoking and drinking Lagavulin.

  “Explain it to me, Lole, what should I have understood?”

  I’d been aware that she was drifting away from me. A little more with every month that passed. Even her body was less open. The passion had gone from it. Our desires weren’t leading anywhere new, just perpetuating an old love affair. Nostalgia for a love that might have been.

  “There’s nothing to explain, Fabio. That’s the tragedy of life. You’ve been listening to flamenco for years, and you’re still asking me what you should have understood.”

  It was a letter, a letter from Babette, that had set everything in motion. I’d met Babette when I’d been appointed head of the Neighborhood Surveillance Squad in North Marseilles. She was just starting out as a journalist. It just happened to be her that her newspaper, La Marseillaise, had asked to interview this rare bird the police were sending to the front line, and we’d become lovers. “Seasonal lovers,” she liked to call us. Then one day, we’d become friends. Without ever having said that we loved each other.

  Two years ago, she’d met an Italian lawyer named Gianni Simeone. Love at first sight. She’d followed him to Rome. Knowing her, I was sure love wasn’t the only reason. I was right. Simeone’s specialty was the Mafia. And for years, ever since she’d gone freelance, Babette’s dream had been to write the most in-depth report yet attempted on the influence of the Mafia in the South of France.

  Babette had told me all about it—how far she’d gotten with her work, what still remained to be done—when she’d come back to Marseilles to check out a few things in local business and political circles. We’d met three or four times, and talked over a grilled sea bass with fennel, at Paul’s on Rue Saint-Saëns. One of the few restaurants in the harbor area, along with L’Oursin, which isn’t a tourist trap. What I particularly liked was the way we met as lovers, even though we weren’t. But I couldn’t have said why. Couldn’t have explained it to myself. Much less to Lole.

  And when Lole came back from Seville, where she’d been visiting with her mother, I didn’t tell her about Babette, or that we’d met a few times. Lole and I had known each other since we were teenagers. She’d loved Ugo. Then Manu. Then me. The last survivor of our dreams. I had no secrets from her. She knew about the women I’d loved and lost. But I’d never talked to her about Babette. Because what there had been between us—what there still was between us—was too complicated.

  “Who is this Babette? Why did you tell her you love her?”

  She’d opened a letter from Babette. It might have been chance, it might have been jealousy, it doesn’t matter. Why does the word “love” have to be so full of meaning? Babette had written. We’ve both said “I love you.”

  “There’s ‘I love you’ and there’s ‘I love you,’” I’d stammered.

  “Say that again.”

  It was so hard to explain. You could say “I love you” out of loyalty to a love that never really existed, and you could say “I love you” to express the truth of a relationship built on the thousand joys of everyday life.

  I hadn’t been frank with her. I’d tried to wriggle out of it, and only ended up digging a deeper hole for myself. And at the end of a beautiful summer night, I’d lost Lole. We were on my terrace, finishing a bottle of white wine from the Cinque Terre. A Vernazza, which some friends of ours had brought back with them.

  “You know something?” she’d said. “When you can’t live anymore, you have the right to die and make a last spark out of your own death.”

  Since Lole had left, I’d thought a lot about those words. And I’d been looking desperately for that spark.

  “What did you say?” Hassan had asked.

  “Did I say something?”

  “I thought you did.” He’d served another round, then le
aned towards me and said, “What people have in their minds is sometimes clearer than what they say with their tongues.”

  I should have called it a day, finished my drink and gone home. Taken the boat and sailed out to the Riou islands to watch the sun rise. I couldn’t stand the thoughts that were going through my head. The smell of death had come back. With my fingertips, I touched the ring Perez had given me. I didn’t know if that was a good or a bad omen.

  Behind me, a curious conversation had started between a young man and a woman of about forty.

  “Shit!” the young man had said, irritably. “You’re just like Madame de Merteuil.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A character in a novel. Les Liaisons dangereuses.”

  “Never heard of it. Are you trying to insult me?”

  That made me smile, and I asked Hassan to pour me another drink. That was when Sonia came in. Though I didn’t know yet that her name was Sonia. She was a woman I’d seen a few times recently. The last time was in June, at a fishermen’s festival in L’Estaque. We’d never spoken.

  Sonia had made her way through the crowd to the bar and slipped in between another customer and me. Her body up against mine.

  “Don’t tell me you were looking for me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because someone already said that to me tonight.”

  Her face lit up in a smile. “I wasn’t looking for you. But I’m pleased to see you here.”

  “So am I! Hassan, give the lady a drink.”

  “The lady’s name is Sonia,” he said.

  And he poured her a whisky on the rocks. Without asking. As if she were a regular.

  “Cheers, Sonia.”

  We clinked glasses. Sonia’s gray-blue eyes met mine. And the night took a different turn. I started getting a hard-on. Such a big one it almost hurt. I’d lost count of how many months it had been, but it was ages since I’d last slept with a woman. I think I’d almost forgotten what it was like to get a hard-on.