Chourmo (10 page)

“You're just in time,” she said, kissing me. “I was cooking a few leftovers. Clams in sauce, like a fricassee. And I was planning to grill some
fegatelli
. How about a few pickled sardines to start?”

“Whatever you're having.”

“No need to ask him, dammit!” Félix said. “Just bring it!”

He knocked back his
pastis
, then went behind the bar and poured a round without being asked. Félix's average intake of
pastis
was ten or twelve at noon and ten or twelve in the evening. Today, he was drinking it in a normal glass, with a drop of water. In the old days he used to serve it, almost entirely neat, in very small glasses. Everyone lost count of the rounds. Depending on the number of friends drinking, a round could be eight to ten
pastis
. Never less. Whenever Félix said, “It's my round,” they'd start all over again. It was just the same at the Péano or the Unic, before the first was taken up by a hip crowd and the second became a rock venue.
Pastis
and
kenia
—black and green olives, pickles and all kinds of vegetables cooked in vinegar—were part of the art of living, Marseilles style. Those were the days when people still knew how to talk to each other, when they still had things to say to each other. Of course, it made you thirsty. And it took time. But time didn't matter. Nobody was in a hurry. Everything could wait a few more minutes. Those days were no better and no worse than now. But it was a time when you could share your joys and your sorrows. You didn't hold back. You could even tell people you were poor. You were never alone. You just had to come to Chez Félix. Or Chez Marius. Or Chez Lucien. And whatever problems kept you awake at night vanished in a haze of
pastis
.

Celeste would often shout to a customer, “Hey! You want me to lay a place for you?”

“No, I'm going home to eat.”

“And does your wife know you're going home to eat?”

“What the hell? I told her this morning.”

“She can't still be waiting for you, you know. Have you seen what time it is?”

“Oh, shit!”

And he'd sit down to a plate of spaghetti with clams and eat it quickly, so that he could get to work on time.

Félix placed the
pastis
in front of me, and we clinked glasses. He looked at me with his bloodshot eyes. He seemed happy. We'd known each other for twenty-five years. But in the last four he'd transferred his fatherly affections to me.

Dominique, their only son, who'd had a passion for wrecks on the sea bed between the Riou islands and the Maire islands, had dived one day and hadn't come up again. He'd heard that fishermen from Sanary were constantly snagging their nets on the bottom of the Blauquières plateau, twelve miles off the coast, between Toulon and Marseilles. It might have been a protuberant rock. It might have been something else. Dominique had never returned with the answer.

But his hunch had been right. A few months ago, at that very spot, quite by chance, two divers from the maritime survey team, Henri Delauze and Popof, had brought up, from a depth of sixty-five feet, the intact wreck of the
Protée
, the French submarine that went missing between Algiers and Marseilles in 1943. The discovery had been widely reported in the local press, and Dominique's name had been mentioned. At noon that day, I'd gone to Chez Félix. The discovery of the
Protée
hadn't brought his son back to life. But it had given his name a new luster. It had made him a pioneer. He was part of legend now. We'd drunk to that. Crying with happiness.

“Your health!”

“Damn that's good.”

I hadn't been back since that day. Four months. When you don't go anywhere, time rushes by at a tremendous speed. I suddenly realized that. Since Lole had gone, I hadn't left my cottage. And I'd neglected the few friends I still had.

“Could you do me a favor?”

He nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

He'd have done anything for me, except drink water.

“Phone Jo, at the Bar de la Place. There's a black Safrane parked just outside his door. Get him to take a cup of coffee out to the driver, say it's from the guy in the Renault 5.” He picked up the receiver. “And ask him to see what the guy looks like. For the last hour he's been sticking to my tail like a limpet.”

“Too many jerks around these days. You been banging his wife?”

“Not that I recall.”

Jo liked the idea of having a laugh at the end of the day. That didn't surprise me. It was the kind of trouble they got up to in his bar. I wasn't one of his customers. The place was a bit too
mia
for my taste. Full of vulgar, narrow-minded people. There were other bars I preferred. Chez Félix, of course. Etienne's place, at the top of the Panier, on Rue de Lorette. And Ange's, on Place des Treize-Coins, just behind the station house.

“After the coffee,” Jo said, “you want us to grab him? There are eight of us in the bar.”

Félix looked at me. I was holding the earpiece. I shook my head.

“Forget it,” Félix answered. “Just the coffee. His wife's just cheated on him.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jo called back. We'd already gotten through a Côteaux d'Aix, a red wine from the Domaine des Béates. 1988.

“Hey, Félix! You been banging this guy's wife, you better watch out.”

“Why?” Félix asked.

“His name's Antoine Balducci.”

Félix gave me a questioning look. I didn't know anyone of that name. Let alone his wife.

“Don't know him,” Félix said.

“He's a regular at the Rivesalte in Toulon. He's got underworld connections in the Var. That's what Jeannot says. I got him to go with me when I took the coffee out. Just for a laugh, you know. Jeannot was a waiter over that way. That's where he met Balducci. Hell, it was a good thing it was dark! If he'd recognized him, things might have hotted up . . . And anyhow, there were two of them.”

“Two,” Félix repeated, giving me a questioning look. “You didn't know?”

“No.”

“I couldn't even tell you what the other guy looks like,” Jo went on. “He didn't move. Didn't say a word. Didn't even breathe. In my opinion, he's top brass, compared with Balducci . . . Hey, you in trouble, Félix?”

“No, no, it's not me . . . It's one of my customers . . . A really good customer.”

“Well, tell him to make himself scarce. If you ask me, these guys are armed to the teeth.”

“I'll pass it on. Look, Jo, are you sure this hasn't landed you in any trouble?”

“No, Balducci laughed. Maybe not very genuine, but he did laugh. These guys can take it, you know.”

“Are they still there?”

“No, they've gone now. ‘So someone bought this for me?' he asked, and pointed to the coffee. ‘Yes, monsieur,' I said. He put a hundred francs in the cup. The coffee spilled all over my fingers. ‘There's your tip.' You see the kind of guy.”

“Yeah, I see. Thanks, Jo. Drop by for an aperitif one of these days. Ciao.”

Celeste brought the
fegatelli
, grilled to a turn, together with a few potatoes sprinkled with parsley. Félix sat down and opened another bottle. With its fragrances of thyme, rosemary and eucalyptus, the wine was a small masterpiece. You couldn't get tired of it.

As we ate, we talked about the tuna fishing competition traditionally organized by the nautical club of the Vieux-Port at the end of September. It was the season for it. In Marseilles, Port-de-Bouc, Port Saint-Louis. Three years ago, just off Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, I'd caught a 660-pound tuna, from two hundred and eighty feet down. The battle had gone on for three and a quarter hours. I'd had my photo in the Arles edition of
Le Provençal
and I'd been made an honorary member of the Les Goudes boat club, La Rascasse.

I was getting ready for the competition, as I did every year. They'd recently changed the rules to allow fishing
au broumé
. A traditional Marseilles method. You stop your boat, and you attract the fish by throwing crushed sardines and bread into the sea. It makes a kind of oily patch, which is carried along on the current. When the fish, swimming against the current, smells it, he heads for the boat. After that, the real sport starts!

“So, you don't know much more than you did before, do you?” Félix asked, a touch worried, when Céleste went to get the cheese.

“No,” I replied, laconically.

I'd forgotten all about the guys in the Safrane. It was true, I didn't know much more than I'd known before. What could I possibly be involved in, that two mobsters from the Var should be on my tail? I didn't know anyone in Toulon. I hadn't been near the place in more than thirty years. I'd done my training there, as a conscript. I'd had a really bad time. I'd wiped Toulon off my map forever. And I certainly wasn't going to change my mind now. In the last municipal elections, the city had gone over to the National Front. Maybe it was no worse than the previous administration. But it was just a matter of principle. Like with Saadna. I never drank with people who were filled with hate.

“You haven't done anything stupid, I hope?” he went on, in a fatherly tone.

I shrugged. “I'm too old for that.”

“What I think is . . . Look, I know this is none of my business, but . . . I thought you were taking it easy, in your cottage. I thought Lole was treating you like a king.”

“I am taking it easy, Félix. But without Lole. She left.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I just thought. Seeing the two of you together last time . . . ”

“Lole loved Ugo. She loved Manu. And she loved me too. All in twenty years. I was the last.”

“It's you she always loved.”

“Manu told me that once. A few days before he was shot down, right there, on your sidewalk. We'd been eating
aïoli
, you remember?”

“He was scared you'd steal her from him one day. He was sure the two of you would get together eventually.”

“Nobody steals Lole. Ugo couldn't live without her. Neither could Manu. But I could. At least then. Not now.”

There was a silence. Félix refilled our glasses.

“Have to finish the bottle,” he said, slightly embarrassed.

“Yeah . . . If I'd been the first, everything would have been different. For her and me. For Ugo and Manu too. But I'm the last. Sure, we love each other. But it's not easy to live in a museum, surrounded by memories. The people you've loved never die. They're always with you . . . It's like this city, you know, it exists because of all the people who've lived in it. All the people who've sweated, toiled and hoped in it. Out there on the streets, my mother and father are still alive.”

“It's because they're exiles.”

“Marseilles is a city of exiles. It'll always be the last port of call in the world. Its future belongs to those who arrive. Never to those who leave.”

“Oh, and what about those who stay?”

“They're like people at sea, Félix. You never know if they're alive or dead.”

Like us, I thought, as I emptied my glass and waited for Félix to refill it.

Which of course he promptly did.

I
'd gotten home late, drunk a fair amount, smoked too much and slept badly. It was sure to be a lousy day.

The weather, though, was glorious, the way it sometimes is in September, but only here. Beyond the Lubéron, or the Alpilles, it was already fall. In Marseilles, sometimes until the end of October, an aftertaste of summer lingers. All it took was a breeze, and the smells of thyme, mint and basil returned.

That was how it smelled this morning. Mint and basil. Lole's smells when we made love. I'd suddenly felt old and tired. Sad too. But I'm always that way when I've drunk too much, smoked too much and slept badly. I hadn't had the courage to take the boat out. A bad sign. It hadn't happened to me in a long time. Even after Lole left, I'd continued going out to sea.

Every day I needed to distance myself from human beings. To recharge my batteries from the silence. The fishing was incidental. Like a tribute paid to the vastness of the sea. Far out there, on the open sea, you learned to be humble again. And by the time I came back to land, I was full of goodwill toward men.

Lole knew that, and a lot of other things I'd left unspoken. She'd wait for me and we'd have lunch on the terrace. Then we'd put on some music and make love. With as much pleasure as the first time. And as much passion. It was as if our bodies had been looking forward to these celebrations since we were born. The last time, we'd started making love with
Yo no puedo vivir sin ti
playing. An album by the Gypsies of Perpignan. Cousins of Lole's. It was when we'd finished that Lole announced her intention to leave. She needed to be “somewhere else” the way I needed the sea.

A cup of scalding hot coffee in my hand, I sat down facing the sea, and let my gaze wander into the distance. Out there where even memories are obsolete. Where everything is turned upside down. Out as far as the Planier lighthouse, twenty miles from the coast.

Why hadn't I left, never to return? Why was I letting myself grow old in this two-bit cottage, watching the freighters sail away? Of course, Marseilles had a lot to do with it. Whether you were born here or landed here one day, you soon grew feet of lead. Travel was something you'd rather see in other people's eyes. In the eyes of those who came back after confronting the worst that life could throw at them. Like Ulysses. We liked Ulysses here. And over the centuries, the people of Marseilles had weaved and unraveled their own history, like poor Penelope. The tragedy these days was that Marseilles no longer looked toward the East, but saw only the reflection of what she was becoming.