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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 1997 by Éditions Flammarion

  First publication 2007 by Europa Editions

  Translation by Howard Curtis

  Original Title: Les marins perdus

  Translation copyright © 2007 by Europa Editions

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  ISBN 9781609451714

  Jean-Claude Izzo

  THE LOST SAILORS

  Translated from the French

  by Howard Curtis

  For Laurence

  1.

  ON A GRAY MORNING, WHISTLING BESAME MUCHO

  This morning, Marseilles looked as gray as a northern port. Diamantis hurriedly had a cup of instant coffee in the deserted mess, then went down on deck, whistling Besame mucho. That was the tune that came into his head most often. It was also the only one he could whistle. He took a Camel from a crumpled pack, lit it, and leaned on the ship’s rail. Diamantis didn’t mind this weather. Not today, anyway. It fitted his gray mood perfectly.

  He let his gaze wander toward the open sea, trying to postpone the moment when, like the rest of the crew of the Aldebaran, he would have to come to a decision. He’d never been good at making decisions. For the past twenty-five years, he had let himself be carried along by life. From one freighter to another. From one port to another.

  There were storm clouds in the sky, and the islands of the Frioul were just a dark stain in the distance. You could barely see the horizon. A day without a future, Diamantis thought. He didn’t dare admit to himself that today was just like every other day. Five months. The crew of the Aldebaran had already been here for five months. Moored at the end of the four-mile-long sea wall known as Le Large. A long way from everything. With nothing to do. And no money. Waiting for someone to buy this damned freighter.

  The Aldebaran had arrived in Marseilles on January 22, from La Spezia in Italy, to take on board two thousand tons of flour bound for Mauretania. Everything had gone well. Three hours later, a court order had been issued preventing the ship from leaving, because of debts contracted by its owner, a Cypriot named Constantin Takis. No one had seen hide nor hair of him since. “He’s a son of a bitch” was all Abdul Aziz, the captain of the Aldebaran, had said, handing the court order to his first mate, Diamantis, with a gesture of disgust.

  For the first few weeks, they had thought the matter would be resolved quickly. Sailors know all about hope. It’s what keeps them alive. Anyone who has been to sea at least once in his life knows that. Every day, in defiance of the facts, Abdul Aziz, Diamantis and the seven crew members went about their business as if they were due to leave the next day. Maintaining the machinery, cleaning the deck, checking the electrical equipment, inspecting the bridge.

  Life on board had to continue. It was vital.

  And Abdul Aziz proved to his men that he was just as good a captain trapped here on land as he was on the high seas. It was surely thanks to his personal qualities that a support network had quickly sprung up around the Aldebaran. A charitable organization provided food and drink. The maritime firefighters kept them supplied with fresh water. The Port Authority made sure their laundry was done and their garbage removed. The biggest relief of all was that, since the third month, the Seamen’s Mission had been sending money to the crew’s families.

  “We were lucky to get stranded here,” Abdul had said. “Anywhere else, we’d have died on the spot. You know something, Diamantis? I like this town.”

  Diamantis also liked Marseilles. He had liked it since the first time he’d landed here. He was barely twenty. Ship’s boy on board the tramp steamer Ecuador, a rusty old freighter that never ventured farther than the Strait of Gibraltar. Diamantis had a vivid memory of that day. The Ecuador had passed the Riou archipelago and the islands of the Frioul, and there in front of his eyes was the harbor. Like a strip of pink-and-white light, separating the blue of the sky from the blue of the sea. It was dazzling. Marseilles, he had thought then, is a woman who offers herself to those who arrive by sea. He had even written it down in his log. Not even realizing that he was expressing the founding myth of the city. The story of Gyptis, the Ligurian princess who gave herself to Protis, the Phocean sailor, the night he entered the port. Since then, Diamantis had lost count of the number of times he had put in here.

  But now, everything was different. They were like lost sailors in Marseilles. Diamantis had realized that at the end of the first month, when they had been asked to leave Wharf D and moor at berth No. 111, at the end of Quai Wilson, along the sea wall. There were many similar stories to theirs in many different ports. The Partner had been waiting for three years in Rouen. No one knew who the owner was: the ship had been sold and resold without ever leaving port. Closer to home, the Africa, a bulk carrier, had been berthed in Port-de-Bouc for eighteen months. The Alcyon and the Fort-Desaix, a roll-on roll-off ferry and a tramp steamer, were trapped in Sète. Diamantis had heard people talking about it. So had Abdul Aziz.

  The two men had known all that when they embarked on the Aldebaran. More and more freighters were encountering similar misadventures. The only exceptions were the container ships and the tankers that belonged to international fleets, and not to owners who played with freight the way people play roulette. But Abdul Aziz and Diamantis never talked about that. They were too superstitious. The Aldebaran would put to sea again. With Abdul Aziz commanding. That was the truth. At fifty-five, he couldn’t contemplate leaving his ship. He had taken command of it at La Spezia and he would get it back to its owner. Whoever he was. Wherever he was. He had said that again, last night, to the assembled crew in the mess.

  In a voice he’d managed to drain of all emotion, he had read out the legal communication he had been given that afternoon.

  “The Aldebaran has been seized as security for the debts incurred by a company claimed by its creditors to be linked to the ship’s owner. Whereas the company controlling the Aldebaran is totally separate in law from the debtor company . . .”

  The crew listened to him in silence, not understanding a single damned word of this legal mumbo-jumbo. The court-appointed lawyer gave them a word-by-word commentary. There was no point. They’d grasped the basics anyway. Even the two Burmese. The ship wouldn’t be putting to sea any time soon.

  “We’ll be able to pay you only if the boat is sold, and even then only if the conditions are right,” Abdul had resumed, cutting off the lawyer in the middle of a fine flight of legal oratory. “That’s what it means. It could happen tomorrow or it could take six months. Or even a year. I don’t want you to be under any illusions. In Sète, a freighter like ours, the Fort-Desaix, was put up for auction last week. It didn’t find a buyer . . . That’s what you have to know. I know your families are having difficulties. So is mine. That’s why I’m not going to hold any of you back. I’ve made inquiries, and there is compensation available for anyone who wants to leave. It won’t be much, but it is available. Think about it and let me know what you’ve decided by tomorrow morning. I’m staying. My place is here. But you all know that anyway.”

  He looked at all of them in turn, except for the lawyer—he’d left him out of the running from the outset. For a moment, Diamantis thought Abdul was going to ask if anyone had any questions. But he didn’t.

  Instead, he sa
id, “I’m sorry about . . . all this. I shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up. I really believed we’d be putting to sea again. I still believe it, but . . .”

  He stood up. He seemed exhausted.

  “Good night, my friends.”

  He left the room, tight-lipped, body stiff, eyes fixed in the distance. Proud, the way desperate people sometimes are.

  Diamantis had watched him go. He’d guessed that Abdul Aziz was going to take refuge in his cabin. Lying on his bunk with his eyes closed, he would find consolation in the music of Duke Ellington. He had the complete works on cassette, and he listened to them on his Walkman. A gift from Cephea, his wife, for his birthday. He hadn’t come out since, not even to eat. This business was eating away at him. Abdul Aziz didn’t like failure.

  Diamantis threw his cigarette stub in the water. He missed the sea. He had never been persuaded of the joys of life on land, even in a port. Almost thirty years as a sailor. The sea was his life. It was the only place he felt free. Not alive, not dead, but in another place. A place where he found a few reasons to be himself. It was enough for him.

  He had nothing tangible to show for his life. He didn’t have a family anymore, he didn’t have a woman waiting for him. There was only his son, Mikis. Eighteen this year. Half the money he made was for him. To pay for his studies in Athens. Mikis loved literature, and Diamantis sometimes hoped his son would write popular novels based on his voyages. The one thing that Diamantis was afraid of was that Mikis might also go to sea. All his family had been sailors, father to son.

  “All my life I ran after my father,” he had told Abdul one evening. “Until he died. By then, I didn’t know any other life. I couldn’t do without the sea anymore. My only attempt to break free, to settle on land, was when I married Melina and went to live in Agios Nikolaos, on the island of Psara, where my father had bought a house. But what can you do on an island where there’s nothing but goats? We made a child!

  “At night, to get him to sleep, I’d read him Homer. Four years later, I went back to sea. Melina went back to Athens. To her family. With Mikis in her arms. When I got back, two years later, she asked me for a divorce. I stayed a week, then left again, and I’ve kept going ever since. This is the first time since Mikis was born that I’ve stayed so long on land.”

  “And how do you feel about it?”

  “I don’t know who I am anymore. How about you?”

  “Right now, I feel the same. I’m not sure about anything anymore. My life. Cephea, the children. All that. I’m not sure my life has a meaning.”

  Diamantis had been surprised by this answer, which was unusually honest and direct, unusually intimate, too, coming from Abdul. In fact, he had only wanted to know how Abdul had become a sailor. The first time for a sailor is as important—if not more important—as the first girl you go to bed with. The same fear. The same fever. The only difference is that you know, as soon as you’ve left port, that a love like that will never fade. At least that was what Diamantis thought.

  The two men had sailed together several times. On other freighters. For other owners. The relationship between them had always been the same. Aziz was the captain, and Diamantis his first mate. Rank had always meant a lot to them. They trusted and respected each other, but they had never talked about their lives. Their lives on land, where, if they had met, they probably wouldn’t have had much to say to each other. Not even during that long trip, six years ago, all the way to Saigon. “We’re going to pieces,” Diamantis had thought at that moment.

  Abdul had smiled at Diamantis’s surprise. “I didn’t answer your question, did I?”

  “No. But . . . think of it, Abdul . . . in all this time. What’s happening to us? Is it just the blues, or what?”

  “It’s being on land for so long. It’s changing us. There’s no sea between us. Just emptiness. The fear of falling.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Afraid of finishing up here, yes. Not going to sea anymore, I mean. Not having a ship anymore.”

  Abdul had fallen silent. They had walked between the winch and the anchor chain, past the hawseholes, to the very front of the bow. Abdul leaned on the ship’s rail and looked at the stars. He pointed to the sky.

  “You see that one?” he asked Diamantis. “That’s Cepheus. My wife is Cephea. So that’s my lucky star. Do you have a star?”

  “I’ve followed all of them,” Diamantis joked. “None of them really smiled on me.”

  “I became a sailor by chance. In my family, we’ve always been traders. One day, my elder brother—there were five of us, two boys and three girls—left Beirut to open a branch in Dakar. It did well. My father sent me to help him out. I’d just turned twenty-three and it was my first time at sea. The ship was a liner called the Hope. Before the war, it had sailed regularly to New Caledonia. The Hope, can you imagine?

  “I spent almost the whole journey on deck. I was crazy about it. Love at first sight! When I got to Dakar, as you can imagine, I was bored to death. As soon as I could, I ran to the harbor, to look at the ships. There were so many! I ended up making friends with a guy my age named Mamoudi. His father worked for an American company, the European Pacific. He introduced me to him. Ten days later, I was sailing for Botany Bay, the port of Sydney. On the Columbia Star.”

  They had continued their conversation late into the night, on the terrace of Roger and Nénette’s, a tiny restaurant near the Vieux-Port. The pizzas were delicious there, but the real delight was the lasagnette in tomato and goat’s cheese sauce, with an accompaniment of larks cooked in the same sauce. They had bicycled as far as the dry dock, then caught a bus heading downtown. The bicycles were a gift from the longshoremen’s union. Five bicycles. There was only one left now. The others had been stolen from the bus stop!

  “When I met Mamoudi,” Abdul continued, “his wife had just had a baby. A daughter. We all celebrated. She was his first child. Well, you’re not going to believe this, Diamantis, that little girl was Cephea!”

  Diamantis said nothing. He was listening. Thanks to the wine, a Bandol rosé—“From the Cagueloup estate,” the patron had said, showing them the bottle—he had overcome the unease he’d felt, entering Abdul’s private world. He sensed that their relationship would never be the same again. Confiding in each other—and Diamantis was ready to do it, too—was an admission that they were well and truly lost sailors.

  “One morning, eighteen years later, I put in at Dakar. I was sailing on the Eridan, my first command. I turn up at Mamoudi’s place. We’d kept in touch. I always sent him a postcard from wherever I was . . . It was the least I owed him. And guess who opens the door?”

  “The little girl.”

  “Dammit, Diamantis, I was so amazed, I couldn’t move! The kid I’d held in my arms had turned into a goddess. So beautiful. I’ve seen women, known women . . . Like you, I suppose. But this one . . .”

  Diamantis caught himself thinking, for once, of Melina. He’d loved her, of course. But out of calculation. Or on the rebound. Which comes to the same thing. His father had just died, and he’d told himself, or had tried to convince himself, that he didn’t need to search the world anymore. He could stop now. The man he’d missed so much as a child, the man he’d run after from port to port, hoping to spend a night, a day, a week with him, had come back to die in his arms. On Psara. Melina had come to the funeral with her parents. They were old friends of his parents. He’d known Melina since they were children. They had made love that night. The night after the funeral. “No, Diamantis,” he told himself, “you’re crazy. Melina was beautiful. She was right for you. You really loved her.”

  “What are you thinking about, Diamantis?” Abdul asked.

  “Melina. She was beautiful, too.”

  Abdul laughed. “Sure. The women we love are always beautiful. Otherwise we wouldn’t sleep with them, would we? Let me tell you something. There are thousands of women
more beautiful than Cephea, I know that. I’ve met them in every port in the world . . . But she . . . she had something in her eyes that was just for me. That’s love. And that’s what I realized when she opened the door that day. Maybe she remembered how I’d held her in my arms when she was born. My hands on her little ass . . .”

  Abdul was a bit drunk, and Diamantis was lost in thought. His memories were coming to the surface, like something coming to the surface of a pond that has been stagnant for too long. It didn’t feel all that good. He’d have liked to drive these memories out of his head. He knew that behind Melina, another face loomed. The face of a girl, eighteen years old. He had loved her madly and had left her—abandoned her—without even saying goodbye.

  It had happened twenty years ago. In Marseilles. He had never tried to find her again any of the times he had put in here, had never tried to find out what had become of her. Not even in all the time they’d been stuck here. He missed her terribly at that moment. Amina. Her face was in his head, and it was too late now to blot it out. He knew what he was going to spend his time doing from now on. He was going to find her. As if by doing that he could finally straighten his life out.

  “How about another one?” Abdul asked, pointing to the empty bottle.

  Diamantis didn’t need to be asked twice. Wine is for remembering, not forgetting.

  2.

  AT NIGHT, THE WORLD ABANDONS US

  Abdul was watching Diamantis through the porthole of his cabin. “Where on earth’s he going so early?” he wondered. Diamantis hadn’t taken the one remaining bicycle, and that intrigued Abdul.

  It was the first time, since they’d been stuck here in Marseilles, that Abdul had wondered about Diamantis’s life on land. He would often leave in the morning, by bicycle, and come back two or three hours later. Sometimes, he was away the whole day, and when he did that, he would go on foot. Like today. But he always did it with Abdul’s full agreement. And never shirked the tasks that needed to be done on the ship. Diamantis, he had to admit, was no slouch when it came to work. On the contrary. One afternoon, he had even joined the crew to tackle the rust that was spreading through the ship. At the end of the day, Abdul had commented to him, somewhat curtly, that a first mate was out of place doing that kind of thing. Diamantis had replied that rust was out of place on a freighter. Abdul had smiled.