Sonia.
There was laughter in her voice. Her words were full of the joys of life.
I hadn’t been back to Italy since I was nine. My father had taken my mother and me to his village. Castel San Giorgio, near Salerno. He’d wanted to see his mother again, one last time. He’d wanted her to see me. I told Sonia about it. I told her how I’d thrown the worst tantrum of my life because I was pissed off eating pasta for lunch and dinner every day.
She laughed. “That’s what I’d like to do now. Take my son to Italy. To Foggia. The way your father did with you.”
She lifted her gray-blue eyes to me, slowly. It was like the dawn coming up. She was waiting for my reaction. A son. How could I have forgotten that she’d told me about her son? Enzo. I hadn’t even remembered when the cops had questioned me. What was it I hadn’t wanted to hear when she’d said “my son”?
I’d never wanted a child. With any woman. I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to be a father. It wasn’t that I couldn’t give love, it was just that I didn’t think I could teach a child trust—trust in the world, in me, in the future. I didn’t see any future for the children of this century. Spending so many years in the police had a lot to do with it. It had distorted my vision of society. I’d seen more kids get into dope and petty crime, then graduate to bigger crimes and end up in jail, than succeed in life. Even those who liked school, who did well at it, eventually came to a dead end. And then they either banged their heads against the wall until they almost died, or they turned around, ready to fight back, to rebel against the injustice that was being done to them, and ended up in the same old cycle of violence, and guns. And jail.
The only woman I’d have liked to have a child with was Lole. But we’d told each other that we didn’t want children. We were too old, that was our excuse. Often, though, when we were making love, I found myself hoping that she’d stopped taking the pill, without telling me. And that she’d announce one day, with a tender smile, “I’m expecting a baby, Fabio.” A gift, for the two of us. For our love.
I knew I should have told her I felt that way. I also knew I should have told her I wanted to marry her, really wanted her to be my wife. She might have said no. But everything would have been clear between us. Whether the answer was yes or no, at least we would have talked about it, simply, like two people happy to be together. But I’d kept silent. And so had she, of course. Until the silence had torn us apart.
Instead of answering Sonia, I finished my drink.
“His father dumped me,” she continued. “Five years ago. We’ve never heard from him since.”
“That’s tough,” I heard myself saying.
She shrugged. “When a guy abandons his own son, never makes any attempt to contact him . . . Five years, you know, and not even at Christmas, not even on his birthday . . . Well, I guess it’s better this way. He wouldn’t have been a good father.”
“But a child needs a father!”
Sonia had looked at me in silence. We were sweating through every pore. Me more than her. Her thigh was still up against mine, lighting a fire I thought I’d never feel again. A raging inferno.
“I brought him up on my own. Well, my father helped, of course. Maybe one day I’ll meet a guy I’ll be happy to introduce to Enzo. He could never be his father, I know that, but I think he could give him what a child needs as it’s growing up. Authority, and love. And trust. Dreams too. A man’s dreams . . .”
Sonia.
At that moment, I had the impulse to put my arms around her and hold her. Gently, she freed herself, laughing. “Fabio.”
“All right, all right.” I raised my hands above my head, to show her I wouldn’t touch her.
“We’ll have a last drink, and then we’ll go for a swim. O.K.?”
I’d thought to take her out in my boat. We’d go swimming in the sea. In deep water. In the very place I was right now. Thinking back on it, I was amazed I’d even suggested it. I’d only just met her. My boat was my desert island. My place to be alone. I’d only ever taken Lole out in it. The night she came to live with me. And Fonfon and Honorine, just recently. No other woman had ever been judged worthy to get in my boat. Not even Babette.
I’d signaled to Hassan to pour us another round. “Sure,” he’d said.
Coltrane was playing. I was completely drunk, but I recognized “Out of This World.” Fourteen minutes that could devour a whole night. Hassan would soon be closing, I realized. Coltrane was always to send his customers on their way. To their lovers. Or their lonely nights. Coltrane was for the road.
I was quite incapable of getting up from my chair.
“You’re beautiful, Sonia.”
“And you’re plastered, Fabio.”
We both roared with laughter.
Happiness. It was still possible.
Happiness.
The phone was ringing when I got in. Ten past two. Jerk, I said to whoever was daring to phone me at such an hour.
I let it ring until they gave up.
Silence. I didn’t feel tired. But I did feel hungry. Honorine had left a note for me in the kitchen. Propped up against the clay casserole she used for stews. “It’s soupe au pistou. You can eat it cold if you like. Have some. Lots of love. Fonfon says hi.” Next to it, in a little saucer, she’d put some grated cheese, just in case.
Soupe au pistou was vegetable soup with garlic and basil, and I suppose there were a thousand ways to make it. Everyone in Marseilles said, “My mother used to make it this way,” and so that was how they made it. It always tasted different. It depended on the vegetables you put in. It depended especially on getting the garlic and the basil in the right proportions, and how you mixed both of them with tomato pulp heated in the same water you’d cooked the vegetables in.
Honorine made the best soupe au pistou. Haricot beans, kidney beans, French beans, a few potatoes and macaroni. She’d let it simmer all morning. Then she’d tackle the basil and garlic. Crushing them in an old wooden mortar. You really couldn’t disturb her when she was doing that. “If you’re going to stand there like a statue, watching me, I’ll never finish.”
I put the casserole on the stove, on a low flame. Vegetable soup with basil and garlic was even better when it had been reheated a couple of times. I lit a cigarette and poured some red wine from Bandol. A Tempier 91. My last bottle of the year. Maybe the best.
Had Sonia talked about all those things with Honorine? Or with Fonfon? About her life as a single mother. About Enzo. How had Sonia figured out I wasn’t a happy man? She’d told Honorine that she thought I was “unhappy.” I hadn’t told her about Lole, I was sure of that. But I had talked about myself. I’d talked a lot about myself. About my life since I’d come back from Djibouti and become a cop.
Lole’s departure was more than just something that made me unhappy, it was my great tragedy. But it may be that she had left because of my way of life. My attitude to life. I’d spent too long without really believing in life. Had I, without realizing it, become permanently unhappy? Believing as I did that the small joys of everyday life were enough to make you happy, had I given up on my dreams, my real dreams? And, at the same time, on the future? Whenever the dawn rose on a new day, as it was doing now, I never thought about tomorrow. I’d never gone to sea on a freighter. I’d never sailed to the other side of the world. I’d stayed here, in Marseilles. Loyal to a past that didn’t exist anymore. To my parents. To my friends who were gone. And every time a friend died, it made me all the more reluctant to leave. I was trapped in this city. I’d never even gone back to Italy, to Castel San Giorgio . . .
Sonia. Maybe I’d have gone down there with her and Enzo, down to the Abruzzi. Maybe after that, I’d have taken her—or would she have had to urge me?—to Castel San Giorgio, so that both of them could fall in love with that beautiful region that was as much mine as this city where I was born.
I’d had a
plateful of soup—lukewarm, the way I like it. Honorine had surpassed herself again. I finished the wine. I was ready to go to bed. To confront the nightmares. The images of death in my head. When I woke up, I’d go see Sonia’s father. Attilio. And Enzo. “I’m the last man Sonia met,” I’d say. “I’m not sure, but I think she liked me. And I liked her, too.” It wouldn’t make any difference, but there was no harm in saying it, and there couldn’t be any harm in hearing it.
The phone started ringing again.
Angrily, I picked up the receiver. “Fuck!” I yelled, ready to hang up.
“Montale,” the voice said.
That loathsome voice I’d heard twice the day before. Cold, in spite of the slight Italian accent.
“Montale,” the voice repeated.
“Yeah.”
“The girl, Sonia. That was just to make you realize we’re not joking.”
“What?” I cried.
“It’s just the beginning, Montale. Just the beginning. You seem a little hard of hearing. A little stupid, too. So we’ll carry on until you find the shit-stirrer for us. Do you hear me?”
“You bastards!” I screamed. Then, louder and louder, “You scumbag! You bastard! You piece of shit!”
Silence at the other end. But the guy hadn’t hung up. He waited until I was out of breath, then said, “We’re going to kill your friends, Montale. All of them. One by one. Until you find the Bellini woman. And if you don’t shift your ass, by the time we’ve finished you’re going to regret you’re still alive. The choice is yours.”
“O.K.,” I said, feeling drained.
The faces of my friends flashed in front of my eyes. Ending with Fonfon and Honorine. No, my heart was weeping. No.
“O.K.,” I repeated, in a low voice.
“We’ll call again tonight.” He hung up.
“I’m going to kill you, you bastard!” I screamed. “I’m going to kill you! I’m going to kill you!”
I turned, and saw Honorine. She’d put on the dressing gown I’d given her for Christmas. Her hands were folded over her stomach, and she was looking at me in terror.
“I thought you were having a nightmare. You were screaming.”
“The only nightmares are when you’re awake,” I said.
My hate had returned. And with it, that stench of death.
I knew I’d have to kill the guy.
6.
IN WHICH THE LOVE WE SHARE WITH
A CITY IS OFTEN A SECRET LOVE
The phone was ringing. Nine-ten. Shit! The phone had never before rung so much in my house. I lifted the receiver, expecting the worst. Just doing that made me break out in a sweat. It was getting hotter and hotter. Even with the windows open, there wasn’t the slightest breath of air.
“Yeah?” I said grouchily.
“Captain Pessayre. Good morning. Are you always in such a bad mood in the mornings?”
I loved that low, slightly drawling voice.
“In case someone’s trying to sell me a fitted kitchen!”
She laughed. There was something gravelly about her laugh. I guessed she was from the Southwest, that neck of the woods.
“Can I see you this morning?”
It was the same warm voice. But it was clear she wouldn’t take no for an answer. We’d definitely be meeting this morning.
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, no . . . We looked into your statement. Your movements check out. Don’t worry, you’re not a suspect.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ve . . . Let’s just say I’d like to talk to you about a few things.”
“Ah!” I said, falsely cheerful. “If it’s an invitation, there’s no problem.”
This time she didn’t laugh. And I found it reassuring that she wasn’t taken in by me. This was a woman with a strong character and, as I didn’t know how things were going to turn out, it was better to know who I could count on. Among the cops, obviously.
“Eleven o’clock.”
“In your office?”
“I don’t suppose you’re too crazy about that idea.”
“Not really.”
“How about the Fort Saint-Jean? We can go for a little walk, if you like.”
“I like it over there.”
“Me too.”
I’d driven in along the Corniche. I didn’t want to lose sight of the sea. There are days like that. When I can’t enter downtown Marseilles any other way. When I need the city to come to me. I’m the one moving, but it’s the city that comes closer. If I could, I’d always come to Marseilles by sea. Once past the Malmousque cove, the harbor entrance always moved me deeply. I was Edouard Peisson’s sailor, Hans. Or Blaise Cendrars, coming back from Panama. Or Rimbaud, “a fresh angel who landed in the port yesterday morning.” It was a constant replay of the moment when Protis, the Phocean, entered the harbor, his eyes wide with wonder.
The city was transparent this morning. Pink and blue in the still air. Hot already, but not yet sticky. Marseilles was inhaling its own light. As carefree as the customers on the terrace of La Samaritaine, drinking it down to the last drop of coffee in their cups. The roofs were blue, the sea pink. Or vice versa. Until noon. After that, for a few hours, the sun would crush everything. The shade as well as the light. The city would turn opaque. White. And the whole of Marseilles would smell of anise.
In fact, I was starting to feel thirsty. I’d have liked a nice cool pastis, on a shady terrace. At Ange’s, for example, on Place des Treize-Coins, in my old neighborhood, the Panier. My hangout in the days when I was a cop.
“That’s where I learned to swim,” I said to her, pointing to the harbor entrance.
She smiled. She had just joined me at the foot of the Fort Saint-Jean. Striding up to me with a cigarette in her mouth. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, like the day before. They were off-white this time. Her auburn hair was drawn back behind her neck in a little bun. Deep in her dark hazel eyes, there was a wicked gleam. She could easily pass for about thirty. But she must be at least ten years older.
I pointed to the other shore. “You had to swim across and then back if you wanted to show you were a man. And have any chance of making out with girls.”
She smiled again. Revealing, this time, two pretty dimples in her cheeks.
In front of us, three elderly couples with weatherbeaten skin were getting ready to dive into the water. They were regulars. This was where they bathed, not on the beach. Out of loyalty to their own youth, I supposed. For a long time, Ugo, Manu and I had continued coming here to swim. Lole, who rarely bathed, would come and join us, bringing a snack. We’d lie on the flat stones and dry off listening to her reading her favourite lines from Exile by Saint-John Perse.
. . . we’ll head more than one cortege, singing yesterday, singing elsewhere, singing evil at its birth
And the splendor of life going into exile interminably this year.
The elderly people dived into the water—the women wearing white caps—and swam toward the Pharo cove, with confident, skillful strokes. They weren’t showing off. They didn’t have to impress anyone anymore. They impressed themselves.
I watched them as they swam. I was willing to bet they’d all met here when they were sixteen or seventeen. Six friends, three men and three women. And now they were growing old together. Enjoying the simple pleasure of feeling the sun on their skin. That was what life here was all about. Loyalty to the simplest actions.
“Is that what you like, making out with girls?”
“I’m past all that,” I replied, as seriously as possible.
“Oh, right,” she replied, just as seriously. “That’s hard to believe.”
“If you’re talking about Sonia . . .”
“No. I’m talking about the way you look at me. Not many men are so direct.”
“I have a weakness fo
r beautiful women.”
She burst out laughing. The same laugh she’d had on the phone. A frank laugh, like water flowing from a hollow. Harsh but warm. “I’m not what people call a beautiful woman.”
“All women say that, until a man seduces them.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
I was disoriented by the turn the conversation was taking. What the hell are you saying? I asked myself. She looked hard at me, and I felt awkward suddenly. She certainly knew how to get people to talk.
“I know a little,” I said. “Shall we walk, captain?”
“Call me Hélène. Yes, I’d like that.”
We walked alongside the sea until we reached the outer harbor of La Joliette. Facing the Sainte-Marie lighthouse. Like me, she loved this spot, from where you could see the ferries and the freighters going in and out. And like me, she was worried by all the plans for the port. There was one word on the lips of the politicians and the technocrats. Euroméditerranée. Everyone, even those who’d been born here, like the current mayor, was looking toward Europe. Northern Europe, of course. Capital: Brussels.
The only future for Marseilles lay in rejecting its own history. That’s what we were being told. All this talk about redeveloping the port was a way of saying that we had to finish with the port as it was today—the symbol of a bygone glory. Even the Marseilles longshoremen, tough as they were, had come around in the end.
So the hangars would be razed to the ground. J3. J4. The quays would be redesigned. Tunnels would be bored. Expressways would be created. Esplanades. The street layout and the housing provision would be rethought, from Place de la Joliette all the way to the Saint-Charles station. And the maritime landscape would be restructured. That was the great new idea. The great new priority. The maritime landscape.
The things you read in the newspapers were enough to leave any citizen of Marseilles bewildered. Of the hundred berths in the four harbor basins, it was said that they somehow worked “as if by magic.” To the technocrats, that meant chaos. Let’s be realistic, they said, let’s put an end to this charming, nostalgic, but obsolete landscape. I’d laughed out loud one day, reading in Marseilles—a serious magazine—that the history of the city “through its exchanges with the outside world will find in its own social and economic roots the inspiration for a new, nobler downtown area.”
Solea Page 6
