Solea Read online

  Realism. In my opinion, a word used to justify moral complacency, meanness, and the shameful sins of omission that men committed every day. Realism also allowed those who had power in this society—even just scraps, crumbs of power—to crush everyone else.

  I preferred not to be drawn into an argument with her.

  “Why aren’t you saying anything?” she asked, with a touch of irony.

  “Being a realist means getting screwed.”

  “My sentiments exactly.” She smiled. “I only said it to see how you’d react.”

  “And I was afraid you were going to slap me.”

  She smiled again. I liked her smile. The dimples it made in her cheeks. I was becoming familiar with that smile. And with Hélène Pessayre.

  “Fabio,” she said.

  It was the first time she’d called me by my first name. And I really liked the way she said it. I waited for the worst.

  “I looked at the black disk. I read it.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “It’s really horrible.”

  It was as if she was paralyzed.

  I held out my hand to her. She put her hand on mine and squeezed it. Hard. Everything that might or might not happen between us was contained in that touch.

  First, I thought, we had to get out from under the stifling shadow of death. That was what her eyes also seemed to be saying at that moment. And it was like a cry. A silent cry at all the horrors still to come.

  18.

  IN WHICH THE LESS YOU CONCEDE TO

  LIFE, THE CLOSER YOU GET TO DEATH

  Those who are dead stay dead, I was thinking, still holding Hélène Pessayre’s hand tightly in mine. But we have to carry on living.

  “We have to beat death,” I said.

  She didn’t seem to hear me. She was lost in thought, somewhere far away.

  “Hélène,” I said, applying a gentle pressure to her fingers.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “Of course . . .”

  She gave a weary smile, then slowly freed her hand from mine, stood up, and took a few steps around the room.

  “It’s a long time since I last had a man,” she said in a low voice. “I mean, a man who didn’t leave early the next morning, trying to find an excuse not to see me again that night, or any other night.”

  I stood up and walked toward her.

  She was standing by the French window that led out onto my terrace. Her hands deep in the pockets of her jeans, like the other morning at the harbor. She was looking out into the darkness. Toward the open sea. Toward that other shore she had left once. I knew that if you’d been born in Algeria, if you’d grown up there, you could never forget it. Didier Perez never stopped talking about it. From having listened to him, I knew all the seasons of Algiers, its days and its nights. “The silences on summer evenings . . .” He always got a nostalgic look in his eyes when he said that. He missed the place desperately. Above all, those silences on summer evenings. Those brief moments he still thought of as a promise of happiness. I was sure Hélène felt the same thing in her heart.

  She turned to look at me. “Absurdity reigns supreme, but love is the salvation, Camus said. All those corpses, the death I see around me every day . . . It’s made love impossible for me. Even pleasure . . .”

  “Hélène.”

  “Don’t be embarrassed, Montale. It does me good to talk about these things. Especially with you.”

  I could feel her almost physically brooding on her past.

  “The last man in my life . . .”

  She took out the pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her shirt and offered me one. I lit hers for her.

  “It’s as if I was cold inside, you know? I loved him. But when he touched me, I . . . I didn’t feel anything.”

  I’d never talked about these things with a woman. About what happens when the body closes up and doesn’t respond.

  For a long time, I’d tried to remember the last night Lole and I had made love. The last time we’d embraced as lovers. The last time she’d put her arm around my waist. I’d thought about it for hours, but I still couldn’t remember. All I could remember was the night when I’d caressed her body for a long time and finally realized in despair that she was still completely dry.

  “I don’t want to,” she’d said.

  She’d snuggled against me and buried her head in the hollow of my shoulder. My cock had gone soft against her warm belly.

  “It’s not important,” I’d murmured.

  “Yes, it is.”

  She was right, it was important. We’d been making love less often for several months now, and every time Lole had felt less pleasure. On another occasion, as I was slowly moving back and forth inside her, I became aware that she was totally absent. Her body was there. But she was far away. Far already. I couldn’t come. I slipped out of her. Neither of us moved. Neither of us said a word. We both drifted into sleep.

  I looked at Hélène. “You just didn’t love the man anymore. That’s all.”

  “No . . . No, I loved him. I probably still love him. I don’t know. I miss his hands on my body. It wakes me at night, sometimes. Though not so much now as it used to.” She dragged pensively on her cigarette. “No, I think it’s a lot more serious than that. I have the feeling that death is gradually casting a shadow over my life. And when you realize that’s happening . . . how shall I put it . . . ? It’s as if you’re in the dark. You can’t see anything anymore. Not even the face of the person you love. And all the people around you start thinking of you as being more dead than alive.”

  If I kissed her now, I told myself, it would be a hopeless gesture. I didn’t consider it seriously. It was only a thought, a slightly crazy thought, an attempt not to be sucked in to the dizzying spiral of her words. The place she was going was a place I knew. I’d been there many times myself.

  I was starting to understand what she was trying to say. It was all connected with Sonia’s death. That death had reminded her of her father and, at the same time, of what her own life had become. Of all the things that unravel as you go on, as you make choices. And the less you concede to life, the closer you get to death. Thirty-four years old. The same age as Sonia. She’d said that several times, the other day, on the terrace at Ange’s.

  Sonia’s sudden death, just when she had the possibility of a future with me, a future in love—maybe the only kind of future we still have left—had reminded Hélène of her own failures. Her own fears. I understood now why she’d been so insistent on knowing what I’d felt for Sonia that night.

  “You know . . .” I began. But I left the sentence unfinished.

  In my case, it was Mavros’s death that had forever deprived me of my adolescence. My youth. Thanks to Mavros—even though we hadn’t known each other well as children—I’d been able to bear first Manu’s death, then Ugo’s.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Now, my world was over. I had no idea what exactly that might mean, or what the consequences of it might be in the next few hours. I was starting to realize that now. I thought about what Hélène had just said. Like her, I was in the dark. I couldn’t see anything. Only what lay immediately ahead. The things that needed to be done, and once done couldn’t be undone. Like killing that Mafia son of a bitch.

  She took a last drag on her cigarette, and put it out. Almost angrily. I looked her in the eyes, and she looked at me the same way.

  “I think,” she said, “that when something important is about to happen, we’re somehow taken out of our normal state. Our thoughts, I mean, my thoughts, your thoughts, reach out to each other . . . Yours to mine, mine to yours . . . Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I didn’t want to listen to her anymore. Not really. All I wanted was to hold her in my arms. I was only about three feet from her. I could put my hand on her should
er, slide it down her back and take her by the waist. But I still wasn’t sure it was what she wanted. What she expected of me. Not now. Two corpses lay between us, like a chasm separating us. All we could do was hold out our hands to each other. Taking care not to fall into the chasm.

  “I think so,” I said. “We can’t live in each other’s head. It’s too scary. Is that what you mean?”

  “More or less. Let’s say it leaves us too exposed. If I . . . if we slept together, we’d be too vulnerable . . . afterwards.”

  “Afterwards” meant the hours to come. Babette’s arrival. The confrontation with the Mafia guys. The choices to be made. Babette’s and mine. Which weren’t necessarily compatible. Hélène Pessayre’s wish to control everything. And Honorine and Fonfon in the background. With their fear too.

  “There’s no rush,” I replied, stupidly.

  “You’re talking crap. You want it as much as I do.”

  She’d turned to me, and I could see her chest rising slowly. Her lips were slightly parted, waiting only for my lips. I didn’t move. Only our eyes dared meet.

  “I felt it on the phone earlier. How much you wanted me. Am I right?”

  I was incapable of saying a word.

  “Say it.”

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “Please.”

  “Yes, I want you. I really want you.”

  Her eyes lit up.

  Everything was possible.

  I didn’t move.

  “So do I,” she said, almost without moving her lips.

  The woman could extract any words she wanted from me. If she’d asked me at that moment what time Babette was due in Marseilles, and where I was supposed to be meeting her, I’d have told her.

  But she didn’t ask me.

  “So do I,” she repeated. “I think I wanted it at the same moment. As if I’d been hoping you’d call just then . . . That’s what I had in mind when I told you I was coming to see you. Sleeping with you. Spending the night in your arms.”

  “And did you change your mind on the way?”

  “Yes,” she said, with a smile. “I changed my mind, but the desire’s still there.”

  Slowly, she held out her hand, and stroked my cheek with her fingers. Very lightly. My cheek started to burn, much more so than after the slap.

  “It’s late,” she said in a low voice. She smiled. A weary smile. “And I’m tired. But there’s no rush, is there?”

  “The awful thing,” I said, trying to joke, “is that whatever I say to you, you always turn it against me.”

  “That’s something you’ll have to get used to with me.”

  She picked up her purse.

  I couldn’t keep her. We both had something to do. The same thing, or almost. But we wouldn’t take the same path. She knew that, and I got the impression she’d finally admitted it. It wasn’t just a question of trust anymore. Trust committed us too much to each other. We each had to go to our own limits. The limits of our solitude and our desires. At the end of it, we might find a truth. Death. Or life. Love. A relationship. Who could tell?

  Superstitiously, I touched Didier Perez’s ring with my thumb. And I remembered what he’d told me. “If it’s written, it’s written.”

  “I have something to tell you, Montale,” she said, at the door. “It was the head of my squad who ordered your phone to be tapped. But I haven’t been able to find out when.”

  “I assumed it was something like that. But what does it mean?”

  “Just what you thought. In a while, I’m going to have to make a detailed report on those two murders. The motives behind them. The Mafia and all the rest of it . . . It’s the pathologist who discovered the two murders were related. I’m not the only one to be interested in the Mafia’s techniques. He passed on his findings to my superiors.”

  “And what about the disks?”

  She was angry at me for asking the question. I could see it in her eyes.

  “Hand them in with your report,” I said, very quickly. “There’s no reasons to suppose your superior isn’t straight, is there?”

  “If I didn’t hand them in,” she replied, in a monotonous voice, “I’d be finished.”

  For a fraction of a second, we stood there looking at each other.

  “Sleep well, Hélène.”

  “Thanks.”

  We couldn’t shake hands. We couldn’t kiss either. Hélène Pessayre left as she had come. Without the awkwardness.

  “Call me, Montale,” she said. “O.K.?”

  Because it wasn’t so easy to say goodbye. It was as though something was ending before it had even started.

  I nodded, and watched her cross the street to her car. For a moment, I thought of how it might have been if we’d kissed. How gentle and tender the kiss would have been. Then I imagined the two Mafiosi and the two cops looking up drowsily as Hélène Pessayre passed, then going back to sleep, wondering if I’d fucked the captain or not. That was enough to drive any erotic thoughts from my head.

  I poured myself a drop of Lagavulin and put on the album by Gianmaria Testa.

  Un po’ di là del mare c’è una terra sincera

  Come gli occhi di tuo figlio quando ride

  Words that stayed with me for the rest of the night. Just beyond the sea, there’s a land as genuine as the eyes of your son when he smiles.

  Sonia, I’ll give your son his smile back. I’ll do it for us, for what might have been between you and me, the love we might have shared, the life we might have had, the joy, the joys that linger beyond death, for the train going down to the sea, to Turchino, for the days yet to be created, the hours, the pleasure, our bodies, our desires, and again our desires, and for this song I’d have learned for you, this song I’d have sung, for the simple pleasure of saying to you

  Se vuoi restiamo insieme anche stasera

  Saying it again and again, If you like, we can stay together this evening.

  Sonia.

  I’ll do it. For Enzo’s smile.

  By morning, the mistral had died down completely.

  I listened to the news as I made my first coffee of the day. The fire had gained more ground, but the tanker planes had been able to go on the offensive at daybreak. There was renewed hope that the fires could quickly be brought under control.

  My cup of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other, I walked to the end of my terrace. The sea, calmer now, was again a deep blue. This sea, I told myself, this sea that lapped both Marseilles and Algiers, promised nothing, forecast nothing. All it did was give, but it gave in abundance. Maybe what attracted Hélène and me to each other, I thought, wasn’t love after all. Just this shared feeling of being able to see things clearly, which made us both inconsolable.

  And tonight, I’d be seeing Babette.

  19.

  IN WHICH IT IS NECESSARY

  TO KNOW HOW WE SEE THINGS

  My heart skipped a beat. The shutters of Honorine’s house were closed. We never closed our shutters in summer. We simply pulled them together, keeping the windows open, to benefit from a little cool air at night and in the early morning. I put down my cup and walked over to her terrace. The door was closed too. Locked. Even when she “went into town,” Honorine never took so many precautions.

  I quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, didn’t bother to comb my hair, and ran to Fonfon’s. He was behind the bar counter, absently leafing through La Marseillaise.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Can I make you a coffee?”

  “Fonfon!”

  “Fuck it!” he said, putting a saucer in front of me. His eyes were redder than usual, and full of sadness. “I took her away.”

  “What?”

  “This morning. Alex drove us. I have a cousin in Les Caillols. That’s where I took her. She’ll be fine there . . .
I thought maybe a few days . . .”

  He’d had the same idea I’d had for Mavros, then for Bruno and his family. All at once, I felt angry at myself for not suggesting it to Honorine, or to Fonfon. After the conversation he and I had had, it should have been obvious. The fear that something might happen to Honorine. Fonfon had managed to convince her. She’d agreed to go. They’d decided it between them, and hadn’t said a word about it to me. Because it was none of my business now, it was their business, just the two of them. Hélène Pessayre’s slap in the face was nothing compared to this.

  “You could have said something,” I said harshly. “You could have come and woken me up, given me a chance to say goodbye!”

  “That’s how it is, Fabio. No need to get upset. I did what I thought was best.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  No, upset wasn’t the word. But I couldn’t find the right words. My life was going to hell, and even Fonfon didn’t trust me anymore. That’s what it came down to.

  “Didn’t it occur to you those scumbags outside could have followed you?”

  “Of course it occurred to me!” he cried, putting the cup of coffee on the saucer. “What do you think I am? Stupid or something? Senile?”

  “Give me a cognac.”

  Nervously, he got the bottle and a glass, and served me. We didn’t take our eyes off each other.

  “Fifi had to keep an eye on the road. If any car we didn’t know had started after us, he’d have called Alex on his cellphone in the taxi, and we’d have come back.”

  The old bastard! I thought.

  I knocked the cognac back in one go. I immediately felt the warmth of it spread to the pit of my stomach. Sweat broke out all over my back. “And you’re sure no one followed you?”

  “The guys in the Fiat Punto weren’t there this morning. Just the cops. And they didn’t move.”