Other rounds followed. At the bar, then at a little table that had become free. Sonia’s thigh up against mine. Burning me. I remember wondering why things always happen so fast. Falling in love. If only it happened when you were on top form, when you felt ready for the other person. I’d told myself it was impossible to control what happened in your life. I’d told myself a lot of things. But I couldn’t remember any of them. Or anything Sonia had told me either.
I couldn’t remember anything about the way that night had ended. And the phone was ringing.
The phone was ringing, making my temples throb. There was a thunderstorm inside my head. I made a huge effort and opened my eyes. I was lying naked on my bed.
The phone was still ringing. Shit! Why did I always forget to switch on the fucking answering machine?
I rolled over and reached out my arm.
“Yeah?”
“Montale.” A loathsome voice.
“You’ve got the wrong number,” I said, and hung up.
Less than a minute later, the phone rang again. The same loathsome voice. With a hint of an Italian accent.
“You see, it’s the right number. Or would you rather we paid you a visit?”
This wasn’t the kind of awakening I’d been dreaming of. But the guy’s voice hit my body like an ice-cold shower. It sent a chill through me. I knew voices like that, I knew the kind of face that went with them, the kind of body, I even knew where they kept their guns.
I ordered the noise inside my head to stop. “I’m listening.”
“I have one question for you. Do you know the whereabouts of Babette Bellini?”
I wasn’t in an ice-cold shower anymore. I was at the North Pole. I started shivering. I pulled up the sheet and wrapped it around me.
“Who is this?”
“Don’t fuck around, Montale. Your girlfriend, the shit-stirrer, Babette. Do you know where she is?”
“She was in Rome,” I said, telling myself that if they were looking for her here it must mean she wasn’t down there any more.
“She’s not there anymore.”
“She must have forgotten to tell me.”
“Interesting,” the guy sneered.
There was silence. A silence so heavy, my ears started buzzing.
“Is that all?”
“Here’s the deal, Montale. You do whatever you have to do, but you find your girlfriend for us. She has some things that belong to us and we’d like them back. Since you don’t have anything to do all fucking day, it shouldn’t take long, should it?”
“Go fuck yourself!”
“By the time I call you again, you won’t be so high and mighty, Montale.” He hung up.
I’d been right. Life did stink of death.
2.
IN WHICH JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE USED TO LIFE
DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO CARRY ON LIVING
On the table, next to my car keys, Sonia had left a note. You were too plastered. A pity. Call me tonight. Bye. Then her telephone number. Ten winning numbers. An invitation to happiness.
Sonia. I smiled, remembering her gray-blue eyes, her burning hot thigh against mine. And the way her face lit up when she smiled. They were my only memories of her, but they were good ones. I couldn’t wait until tonight. Neither could my cock, straining inside my underwear just to think about it.
My head felt as heavy as a mountain. I hesitated between taking a shower and making coffee. It had to be coffee. And a cigarette. The first drag tore my insides out. I thought they were going to come out through my mouth. “Shit!” I said, and took another drag, for the sake of it. I heaved again, more violently than the first time, and the throbbing in my head started up again, louder than ever.
I stood bent double over the kitchen sink, but there was nothing to throw up. Not even my lungs. Not yet! In the old days, I used to inhale an appetite for life with the first drag of the first cigarette. Those days were long gone. The demons inside my chest didn’t have much to feed on anymore. Just because you’re used to life doesn’t mean you have to carry on living. I was reminded of that every morning when I felt like throwing up.
I put my head under the cold water faucet, screamed a bit, then stretched and got my breath back. I hadn’t let go of the cigarette, and it was burning my fingers. I hadn’t been doing enough sports lately. Hadn’t gone walking in the calanques. Hadn’t done any training at Mavros’s gym. Good food, alcohol, cigarettes. “In ten years, Montale, you’ll be dead,” I told myself. “Do something, for fuck’s sake!” I thought again about Sonia. It felt really good to think about her. Then her image was replaced by Babette’s.
Where was Babette? What the hell kind of trouble was she in? The guy on the phone hadn’t just been trying to scare me. There’d been a real threat in every word. The cold way he’d uttered them. I stubbed out the cigarette and lit another as I poured out the coffee. I gulped down some of it, took a long drag on the cigarette, and went out on the terrace.
The burning sun beat down on me, blinding me. My whole body broke out in a sweat. I felt dizzy. I thought for a moment I was going to pass out. But I didn’t. The floor of the terrace steadied itself. I opened my eyes. The one real gift that life gave me every day was right there in front of me. The sea and the sky. As far as the eye could see. And that light that was like no other, that passed from one to the other. I’d often thought that holding a woman’s body was a way of holding on to that same ineffable joy that came down from the sky to the sea.
Had I held Sonia’s body against me last night? Sonia had come back with me, but how had she left? Was she the one who’d undressed me? Had she slept here? With me? Had we made love? No. No, you were too plastered. She told you that in her note.
Honorine’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Hey, don’t you know what time it is?”
I turned to face her. Honorine. My old Honorine. She was the only thing left of my burned-out world. Loyal to the end. She was almost at the age when you didn’t get any older. She shrank a little more every year, but her face was only slightly wrinkled, as if the blows she’d taken in her life had slid off her without really touching her, without shaking the joy she felt at living in this world. “It’s good to be alive, just to have seen these things,” she often said, pointing to the sky and the sea in front of us, with the islands in the background. “Just for that, I don’t regret being born. In spite of all the things that have happened to me . . .” She always broke off there. As if she didn’t want to allow a tinge of sadness to spoil her simple joy in living. Honorine had only happy memories now. I loved her. She was the greatest of all mothers. And she was all mine.
She opened the little gate separating her terrace from mine, and walked toward me with her shopping bag in her hand, shuffling a little but still stepping confidently. “It’s almost noon, you know!”
I made a sweeping gesture, taking in the sea and the sky. “I’m on vacation.”
“Only people who work take vacations.”
That had been Honorine’s obsession for the past few months. To find me work. To get me to look for work. She couldn’t stand the idea of a man “who’s still young, like you” doing nothing all day.
It fact, that wasn’t entirely true. Every afternoon, from two to seven, I took Fonfon’s place in his bar. I’d been doing it for more than a year now. Fonfon had planned to close his bar. To sell it. But when it came to it, he couldn’t do it. He’d spent too many years serving his customers, talking to them, arguing with them. Closing down would have been like dying. One morning, he’d offered to sell me his bar. For the symbolic sum of one franc.
“That way,” he’d said, “I’ll be able to come in from time to time and lend you a hand. At aperitif time, for instance. You know, just to have something to do.”
I’d refused. He could keep his bar, and I’d be the one to come in and give him a hand.
“All right, then, in the afternoons.”
We’d agreed on that. It gave me a little extra money to pay for gas, smokes, and occasional nights on the town. I still had about a hundred thousand francs stashed away. It wasn’t much, and the money didn’t last long, but at least I could plan ahead. Quite a long way ahead, in fact. My needs were few, and getting fewer. The worst thing that could happen to me was that my old Renault 5 would break down, and I’d be forced to buy another car.
“Honorine, don’t start on that again.”
She frowned at me and pursed her lips. She was trying to look severe, but her eyes gave her away. They were full of love. She only shouted at me because she loved me and was afraid something bad would happen to me if I just stayed here, doing nothing. The devil makes work for idle hands, everyone knows that. She’d drummed that into us often enough, in the days when Ugo, Manu and I used to hang out here. We’d reply by quoting Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal at her. Happiness, luxury, calm and sensuality. That was when she’d shout at us. I had only to look at her eyes to know if she was angry or not.
Maybe she should really have shouted at us. But Honorine wasn’t our mother. How could she have guessed that after all our fooling around, we’d end up doing something really foolish? To her, we were just kids, no better and no worse than any others. And we always had lots of books with us. From her terrace, she could hear us reading aloud, facing the sea as the sun went down. Honorine had always believed that books made you wise, intelligent, serious. Not that it could lead to holding up drugstores and gas stations. And shooting people.
There’d been real anger in her eyes the day, thirty years ago, when I’d come to say goodbye to her. She was so angry, it left her speechless. I’d just signed on for five years in the Colonial Army and was on my way to Djibouti. To get away from Marseilles. And my life. Because Ugo and Manu had crossed the line. Manu had gone crazy and shot a druggist on Rue des Trois-Mages during a hold-up. The next day, I’d read in the newspaper that the man, who had a wife and children, would be paralyzed for life. I was horrified by what we’d done.
Ever since that night, I’d hated guns. Becoming a policeman had made no difference. I’d never gotten used to carrying a weapon. I’d often talked to my colleagues about it. I knew, of course, you could always come up against a rapist, a maniac, a gangster. There were plenty of people out there—violent, crazy or just desperate—who might cross our path one day. That was something that had happened to me a few times. But at the end of that path, I always saw Manu, with his gun in his hand. And Ugo behind him. And myself, somewhere in the vicinity.
Manu had been killed by mobsters. Ugo by cops. I was still alive. That meant I’d been lucky. Lucky to have seen in the looks some adults gave me that we were men. Human beings. And that it wasn’t up to us to take life.
Honorine picked up her shopping bag. “You know, talking to you is like talking to a deaf man.”
She started walking back to her terrace. When she reached the gate, she turned to look at me. “Hey, how about I open a jar of sweet peppers for lunch? With a few anchovies. I’ll make a big salad. In this heat . . .”
I smiled. “I’d be fine with a tomato omelette.”
“What’s the matter with you men today? That’s all Fonfon wanted as well.”
“We got together on the phone.”
“Go on, make fun of me!”
For several months, Honorine had been cooking for Fonfon, too. The three of us often ate together on my terrace in the evenings. In fact, Fonfon and Honorine were spending more and more time together. A few days before, Fonfon had even come over to her place for an afternoon nap. When he got back to the bar, around five o’clock, he’d looked as embarrassed as a kid who’s just kissed a girl for the first time.
I was the one who’d helped Fonfon and Honorine to get together. I didn’t think it was right they should both be alone. They’d stayed faithful to their dear departed for nearly fifteen years. Quite long enough, in my opinion. There was no shame in not wanting to end your days alone.
One Sunday morning, I’d suggested the three of us go to the Frioul islands for a picnic. Honorine had taken a lot of persuading. She hadn’t even been on the boat since her husband, Toinou, had died.
“Dammit, Honorine!” I’d said, getting a little irritated. “Since I’ve had this boat, I’ve only ever taken Lole out. I’m taking both of you now, because I love you. Both of you, can’t you get that into your head?”
Her eyes had misted over, then she’d smiled. That was when I knew that, without in any way repudiating her life with Toinou, she was finally turning the page. On the way back from the picnic, she’d held Fonfon’s hand, and I’d heard her say to him in a low voice, “We can die happy now, can’t we?”
“Oh, I think we still have a little time left, don’t you?” he’d replied.
I’d turned away and looked out to the horizon. To where the sea was darker and thicker. I’d told myself that the solution to all the contradictions of life was there, in that sea. My Mediterranean. And I’d seen myself melting into it, at last resolving all the things I’d never managed to resolve in my life, and never would.
The love those two old people felt for each other had made me cry.
At the end of the meal, Honorine, who’d been strangely quiet throughout, said, “Tell me, that brunette who brought you home last night, is she coming back? Sonia, wasn’t it?”
I was surprised. “I don’t know,” I stammered, almost nervously. “Why?”
“Because she seems really nice. I thought . . .”
That was another of Honorine’s obsessions. She wanted me to find myself a woman. A nice woman, who’d take care of me, even though the thought of another woman cooking for me instead of her turned her stomach.
I don’t know how many times I’d explained to her that the only woman in my life was Lole. Lole had left because I couldn’t be the man she’d expected me to be. There was no doubt about it anymore. And the way I’d hurt her the most was in forcing her to go. Forcing her to leave me. It often woke me up at night. The way I’d hurt her. The way I’d hurt us.
But I’d been waiting for Lole my whole life, and I wasn’t going to give her up that easily. I needed to believe she’d come back. That we’d start all over again. That our dreams, our old dreams, which had brought us together again and given us so much joy already, could at last be fulfilled. Simply and freely. With no more fears or doubts. A relationship based on trust.
Whenever I said that, Honorine would look at me sadly. She knew that Lole had a new life now, in Seville. With a guitarist, who’d crossed over from flamenco to jazz. In the great tradition of Django Reinhardt. Something like Bireli Lagrene. She’d finally agreed to sing for the gajos. She’d joined her friend’s band about a year ago, done gigs with them. They’d recorded an album together. An album of jazz standards. She’d sent it to me, with a note saying only, How are you?
I can’t give you anything but love, baby . . . I hadn’t gotten any farther than that first track. Not that it wasn’t good. On the contrary. Her voice was soft and husky. I recognized the way it had sounded sometimes when we made love. But it wasn’t Lole’s voice I heard, only the guitar supporting it. Making it seem even richer. I couldn’t bear it. I’d put away the album, but I couldn’t put away my stupid illusions so easily.
“Did you talk?” I asked Honorine.
“Sure we did. We had coffee together.” She gave me a big smile. “The poor girl wasn’t in a very fit state to go to work.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had no image of Sonia’s body. Her naked body. I only knew that the thin dress she’d been wearing last night promised all kinds of happiness to a decent man. But maybe I wasn’t such a decent man after all.
“Fonfon called Alex. You know, the cab driver who sometimes plays cards with the two of you. To drive her back. I think she was a little late.”
&n
bsp; Life went on. It always did.
“And what did you and Sonia talk about?”
“A bit about her. Quite a lot about you. We weren’t dishing the dirt, or anything. We just talked.”
She folded her napkin and looked me in the eyes. As she had done earlier on the terrace. But without the wicked gleam. “She told me you were unhappy.”
“Unhappy!” I forced myself to laugh, and lit a cigarette, trying to look composed. What the hell could I have told Sonia? I felt like a little kid caught doing something wrong.
“She hardly knows me.”
“That’s why I said she’s nice. Realizing that about you in such a short time together. It was a short time, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was a short time.” I stood up. “I’m going to Fonfon’s to have a coffee.”
“What is this, we can’t talk anymore?” She was angry.
“I’m sorry, Honorine. I didn’t get much sleep.”
“It’s all right. All I said was, I’d like to see her again.” The wicked gleam was back in her eyes.
“So would I, Honorine. I’d like to see her again too.”
3.
IN WHICH IT ISN’T POINTLESS TO HAVE
A FEW ILLUSIONS ABOUT LIFE
Fonfon had shrugged when I told him, as I drank my coffee, that I couldn’t look after the bar that afternoon. I kept thinking about the mess Babette seemed to have gotten herself in. I had to find out where she was. In her case, that wasn’t so easy. For all I knew, she might be cruising on an Arab emir’s yacht. Pure speculation, of course. Best case scenario. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that she was on the run. Or in hiding somewhere.
I’d decided to check out the apartment she’d kept at the top of Cours Julien. She’d bought it for next to nothing in the seventies and now it was worth a fortune. Cours Julien was the hottest neighborhood in Marseilles. Nothing but restaurants, bars, cafés with live music, antique shops and fashion stores on both sides of the street, all the way up to the Notre Dame du Mont subway station. From seven onwards, it was the center of Marseilles nightlife.
Solea Page 3
