Chourmo (8 page)

I had a head start, a whole night to nose around in Serge's affairs. Pertin was arrogant, and driven by hatred. But he wasn't a good cop. I couldn't imagine him being prepared to waste a single hour turning over a dead man's apartment. He'd rather leave that to the “pencil pushers,” as he called his colleagues at the station house. He had something more interesting to do. Like playing cowboys and Indians in North Marseilles. Especially at night. There was every chance I'd be left in peace.

The truth was, I wanted to gain time. How could I go home, with my hands in my pockets, and look Gélou in the eyes? What could I say to her? That Guitou and Naïma might be spending another night together. That it wasn't harming anyone. Something like that. Lies. It would hurt only her pride as a mother. But she'd been hurt worse than that in her life. And sometimes I chicken out. Especially with women. And especially the ones I love.

At Le Merlan-Village, I spotted an empty phone booth. There was no answer at my place. I tried Honorine.

“We didn't wait for you. We sat down to eat. I made some spaghetti with basil and garlic. Have you seen the boy?”

“Not yet, Honorine.”

“She's getting worried. By the way, before I pass her to you, you remember the mullet you caught this morning? There's enough eggs to make a nice
poutargue
. What do you say?”

Poutargue
was a specialty from the Martigues, similar to caviar. It was years since I'd last eaten it.

“Don't put yourself out, Honorine. That's a lot of work.”

What you had to do was extract the two clusters of eggs, without tearing the membrane that protects them, salt them, crush them, then leave them to dry. Making it could take a week.

“It's nothing. Besides, it's a good opportunity. You'll be able to invite poor Fonfon to dinner. I have the feeling he isn't himself in the fall.”

I smiled. It was true that I hadn't invited Fonfon in a long time. And if I didn't invite him, those two didn't invite each other either. As if there was something indecent about a man and a woman in their seventies, both widowed, wanting to see each other.

“OK, I'll pass you Gélou, she's dying to speak to you.”

I was ready.

“Hello?”

Claudia Cardinale speaking. Gélou's voice sounded even more sensual on the phone. It went down as smoothly as a glass of Lagavulin. Soft and warm.

“Hello?” she repeated.

I had to chase away the memories. Gélou's memories too. I took a deep breath and gave her the speech I'd prepared.

“Listen, it's more complicated than we thought. They're not at her parents'. Or her grandfather's. Are you sure he hasn't come home?”

“No, I left your phone number on his bed. And Patrice knows what's going on. He knows I'm here.”

“What about . . . Alex?”

“He never calls when he's on a trip. There's still a chance. It's . . . It's always been like that, ever since we met. He has his business. I don't ask questions.” There was a silence, then she went on, “Guitou, he's . . . They may be staying with a friend of hers. Mathias. He was one of the friends she went camping with. This Mathias was with her when she came to say goodbye to Guitou, and . . . ”

“Do you know his surname?”

“Fabre. But I don't know where he lives.”

“The Marseilles phone book is full of Fabres.”

“I know. I looked it up last night. I even called several of them. I felt such a fool. After the twelfth one I gave up. I was exhausted, on edge. And even more foolish than before I'd started.”

“In any case, I think we've missed the start of the school year. I'm going to see what else I can do tonight. Tomorrow, I'll try to find out a bit more about this Mathias. And I'll go see Naïma's grandfather.”

A bit of truth in the middle of all the lies. And the hope that Naïma's mother hadn't taken me for a ride. That the grandfather really existed. That Mourad would go with me. That the grandfather would agree to see me. That Guitou and Naïma were there, or not too far from there . . .

“Why not right away?”

“Gélou, have you seen what time it is?”

“Yes, but . . . Fabio, do you think he's all right?”

“Sure, he's in bed with a nice girl. He's forgotten we exist. Don't you remember what it was like? It wasn't bad, was it?”

“I was twenty! And Gino and I were going to get married.”

“It must have been good, though, all the same, eh? That's what I'm asking.”

There was another silence. Then I heard her sniffing at the other end. There was nothing erotic about it. It wasn't Claudia Cardinale playing a role. It was simply my cousin crying, as a mother.

“I think I really screwed up with Guitou. Don't you think so?”

“Gélou, you must be tired. Finish eating and go to bed. Don't wait up for me. Take my bed and try to get some sleep.”

“OK,” she sighed.

She sniffled some more. I heard Honorine coughing behind her. Her way of saying I shouldn't worry, she'd take care of her. Honorine never coughed.

“Take care,” I said to Gélou. “You'll see, tomorrow, we'll all be together.”

I hung up. Rather abruptly, in fact, because for the last few minutes two young bozos on a moped had been circling my car. I had forty-five seconds to save my car radio. I ran out of the booth, yelling. More to let off steam than to scare them. I really did scare them, but that didn't clear my head of all the thoughts buzzing around in it. Zooming past me, the driver of the moped shouted, “Fucking dickhead!”—even less compensation for them than the price of my rotten car radio.

 

Arno had lived in a place called the Old Mill, a spot on the road to Le Merlan curiously neglected by the developers. Before and after it, there was nothing but low-cost Provençal housing developments. High-rises for bank clerks and middle managers. I'd only been here once before, with Serge. The place was rather sinister. Especially at night. After eight-thirty, the buses stopped running, and very few cars passed.

I parked near the old mill itself, which had been turned into a furniture warehouse. The area directly in front of it was an automobile scrap yard, owned by a distant cousin of Arno's, a Gypsy named Saadna. Arno's place was behind it, a parpen shack with a canvas roof. Saadna had built it with the intention of making it into a small body shop.

I went around the mill, and walked along the Marseilles water canal for about a hundred yards, until I came to a bend, just behind the scrap yard. I ran down an embankment of garbage to Arno's place. A few dogs barked, but I wasn't bothered. Most dogs were asleep in the houses. Dying of fear, like their masters. And Saadna didn't like dogs. He didn't like anyone.

Around, there were still a few carcasses of motorbikes. Stolen, I guessed. Arno fixed them at night, bare-chested, with slippers on his feet and a joint in his mouth.

“You could go down for that,” I'd said to him one evening when I'd paid him a visit. Just to make sure he was at home, and not out selling stolen property in the Belleville project. In an hour, we were going to make a raid on the cellars of the project and pick up whatever we found. Drugs, dealers and other human filth.

“Don't jerk me around, Montale! Not you too. You and Serge, you crack me up, you know? It's work. OK? I don't have job security, but it's my life. Looking after number one. You know what I mean?” He'd dragged furiously on his joint, thrown it away angrily, then had looked at me, his wrench in his hand. “I'm not going to live here all my life, you know. So I work. Do you really think . . . ”

I didn't think. That was what worried me about Arno. “Money stolen is money gained.” The logic Manu, Ugo and I had used when we came on the scene, at the age of twenty. However often you tell yourself that fifty million is a good figure and when you reach it you'll stop, one of you always eventually does something you didn't expect. Manu had shot someone. Ugo had gloated, because it was our biggest haul. But I'd thrown up, and left to join the Colonial Army. A whole chapter of our lives had ended abruptly. Our adolescence, our dreams of travel and adventure. Of being free and happy, and not working. No bosses, no chiefs. No God or master.

At any other time, I could have sailed away on a liner. Argentina. Buenos Aires. “Reduced prices on one-way tickets,” as they said on the old Messageries Maritimes posters. But by 1970 there were no more liners. The world was like us now. No destination, no future. I'd left for free. Spent five years in Djibouti. I'd already done my military service there, a few years earlier. It was no worse than being in prison. Or working in a factory. In my pocket, to keep going, to stay sane, I always had
Exile
by Saint John Perse. The same copy that Lole used to read aloud to us, on the Digue du Large, facing the sea.

 

I had, I had this taste for living among men, and now the earth exhales her foreign soul . . .

 

Enough to make you weep.

Then I'd become a cop, without really knowing why or how. And lost my friends. Now Manu and Ugo were dead. And Lole was away, in a place where it ought to be possible to live without memories. Without remorse. Without rancor. Coming to terms with life meant coming to terms with your memories. That was what Lole had said to me one night. The night before she left. I agreed with her about that. It was pointless to question the past. It was the future you had to question. Without a future, the present is nothing but chaos. Of course. But I couldn't get away from my past, that was my problem.

Now, I wasn't anything anymore. I didn't believe in cops and I didn't believe in robbers. Those who represented the law had lost all sense of moral values, and the real thieves weren't the ones who stole to put food on the table. They sent ministers to prison, of course, but that was just one of the ups and downs of political life. It wasn't justice. They all came back sooner or later. In the business world, politics washes everything white. The Mafia is the best example of that. But for thousands of kids in the projects, prison was the start of the downward slope. When they got out, the best was behind them and the worst lay ahead. Whatever dreams they'd had had turned to dust.

I pushed open the door. It had never had a lock. In winter, Arno put a chair against it to keep it closed. In summer, he slept outside, in a Cuban hammock. The interior was as I remembered it. A military surplus iron bedstead in a corner. A table, two chairs. A small wardrobe. A little gas stove. An electric heater. Next to the sink, the dishes from a meal, all washed. A plate, a glass, a fork, a knife. Serge had lived alone. I couldn't see him bringing a girl here. Living in a place like this, you'd really have to want it badly. In any case, I'd never known Serge to have a girlfriend. Maybe he really was gay.

I didn't really know what I was looking for. Something to give me an idea of what he was involved in, something to explain why he'd been shot down on the street. I didn't think I'd find anything, but it was worth a try. I started with the wardrobe, from top to bottom. Inside, a couple of jackets, two pairs of jeans. Nothing in the pockets. The table had no drawers. There was an envelope lying on it, already opened. I put it in my pocket. Nothing under the bed. Or beneath the mattress. I sat down to think. There was nowhere to hide anything.

Beside the bed, on top of a pile of newspapers, two paperback books.
Fragments of a Paradise
by Jean Giono and
The Astonished Man
by Blaise Cendrars. I'd read both books. I had them in my house. I leafed through them. No papers. No notes. I put them down. There was a third book, hardback this time. This one wasn't one of my bedside books.
The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam
by Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. There was a press cutting with it, saying there'd been an order banning the sale and distribution of this book “because of its strong anti-Western stance and because the ideas it contains are contrary to the fundamental laws and values of the Republic.” No notes in this one either.

I came across a chapter entitled “What to Do when Your Wife Is Proud and Rebellious.” I smiled, telling myself maybe it'd teach me how to deal with Lole, if she ever came back. But could you regulate the relationship between a man and a woman with a law? Only religious fanatics—Islamists, Christians or Jews—thought you could. When it came to love, the only things I believed in were freedom and trust. Which didn't make relationships any easier. I'd always known that. Now I was living with the consequences.

The newspapers were from the day before.
Le Provençal
,
Le Méridional
,
Libération
,
Le Monde
. This week's
Le Canard Enchaîné
. Several recent issues of the Algerian dailies
Liberté
and
El Watam
. More surprisingly, a pile of issues of
Al Ansar
, the clandestine newsletter of the Armed Islamic Group, the GIA. Beneath the newspapers, in folders, several more press cuttings. “The Marrakesh Trial: A Trial with a French Suburban Background.” “Biggest Raid Ever on Islamist Groups.” “Terrorism: How the Islamists Recruit in France.” “The Islamist Spider Spins Its Web in Europe.” “Islam: Resistance to Fundamentalism.”

This, along with the Al-Qaradawi book and the issues of
Liberté
,
El Watam
and
Al Ansar
, might be the beginnings of a lead. What on earth had Serge been up to since I'd seen him last? Was he writing an article? An investigation into Islamists in Marseilles? There were six folders full of press cuttings. I noticed a FNAC bag under the sink and put the book and all the papers in it.

“Don't move!” someone cried behind me.

“Don't be an idiot, Saadna, it's Montale!”

I'd recognized his voice. I had no desire to meet him. That was why I'd come via the canal.