by Salim Bachi
I walked to the Piazza del Duomo and sat down at a table in a café facing the cathedral, which had been built around a Greek temple. I was ordering a lemonade, when suddenly a tall, very dark man appeared: Robinson hadn’t changed, he might have put on a little weight, but I wasn’t sure. He almost looked taller than usual. He was dressed in the latest fashion.
“My dear Robinson, you look so affluent… a three-piece suit, in this frightful heat?”
“Elegance makes no allowances for the weather, Sinbad! Clothes maketh a man, particularly a black man.”
“Fine clothes do not make a gentleman.”
“We’d be hung if we dressed as we used to do in the village, me wearing a bubu and you a gandura. You and your lousy proverbs, only savages like you attach credence to…”
“Still on form, I see. So you left your patch of pavement in Rome?”
“Those Lazio bastards were driving me crazy. I was always having to run away from them. And when I’d outdistanced them, the carabinieri took over. You know, those clowns in fancy dress who think they’re policemen and pick up tourists.”
“And what are you up to now, Robinson?”
“I’m working for the honourable Carlo Moro.”
I almost jumped out of my skin. I didn’t expect to come across Vitalia’s father again.
“He’s a good man,” added the Negro.
“He almost killed me.”
“You assaulted the virgin he’d raised as his daughter.”
“As his daughter?”
“She isn’t his daughter.”
“His niece, then?”
“His wife!”
I fell to the ground like a stone dropped from a great height by those wretched birds who flew to Mecca’s aid in the Qur’an.
“The free spirit is lost for words! I’ve silenced the joker, the gossip, the man of legend! That makes me very happy. I’m working for the husband who is a pillar of respectable society.”
“So they employ…”
“Naturellement. These descendants of slave-traders aren’t racists, you know. I say ‘descendants’ because you know a thing or two about that, don’t you, Sinbad.”
“I’m not going to feel guilty for the crimes of my ancestors, Robinson. The Arabs already have quite enough on their plate with their disastrous present without wasting time worrying about their ancestors’ slave-trading past.”
“But if you look at your cousins in Saudi…”
“What fool would go back to Mecca and stick their hand in the royal wasps’ nest? You’d have to be as poor as a Pakistani to do that!”
“You’d have to be really naive to take a cargo of that kind of coal to the home of Abdullah!”
“But what can you tell me about Vitalia?”
“You good-for-nothing sailor!”
“I…”
“Wooooooooh, he’s in love!” exclaimed Robinson. “Carlo’s flighty wife is running around in search of a sailor.”
“Is that true?”
“Cut off my hand in Arabia if it’s not. She’s been confiding in me since she found out that we’re friends before God. She’s told me over and over how much she misses you.”
At those words, I jumped up and hugged Robinson with tears in my eyes.
“She’s waiting for you in Palermo. She asked me to take you to her. I’m risking my Negro neck for your sex life, Sinbad. If that’s not friendship, I don’t know what is!”
“Shall we go?”
“Come on, then!”
X
IWAS REUNITED with Vitalia in Palermo. Robinson came up with a clever scheme to tell her I was there and she agreed to see me again. I was to wait for her in the church of the Martorana. I waited, my heart aflame, my soul liquefied, and she came. She’d changed, her face had lost the radiance and roundness of the first flush of youth, but I thought she was even more attractive. Beneath the Byzantine mosaics, beneath the fire and the gold, her dark hair acquired Venetian-red highlights that filled me with wonder.
We went out into the Kalsa, the Arab quarter, where it was easy to hide from prying eyes. We thought we’d be shielded by the narrow lanes. She took me to a bombed-out chapel that hadn’t been restored after the war. Much as it pains me, I can’t now remember its name. It had a melancholy atmosphere. The high walls standing open to the sky, over the altar, were symbolic of our love. Boundless freedom and the vivacious brilliance of youth, which had begun on a beach and continued here, under the dazzling skies of Sicily, where I renewed my acquaintance with Sciascia and the enjoyment afforded by his books.
I took Vitalia in my arms and embraced her on the altar—a strange communion—and even though she was married, I felt as if I were marrying her. When I told her so, she reminded me that I was an Arab, and a Muslim to boot. She slipped her tongue in my mouth to mollify me, but the bite of her words hurt even more. The glare of the sea, my memories of the beach, her sea-surf body, I remembered it all and it made me want to cry. Separated for decades, we were now old lovers trying to relive our lost youth. Which might have been true if her caresses hadn’t become more insistent in the meantime and if her burning, trembling body weren’t reminding me with every second that she was as alive as running water, and that we were young.
Then we entered the garden amidst the flames. I was becoming a mystic, with my thoughts of the bombs and fires that had set this Eden ablaze. In the scorching heat of the sun, I became capable of all forms, all images, as Ibn ’Arabi had. When I took her in my arms again, we were already dancing like stars under the canopy of heaven. Or perhaps it was the constantly spinning earth that was waltzing with us?
In the end, we decided to leave Palermo together and get as far away as possible from this town and Carlo Moro.
This time I had to wait for her in the Monreale cloister, just above Palermo. It was a safe place and the custodian would open the gates of the park for me. Vitalia had already paid him the pizzo through Robinson. The tall Senegalese knew all the Sicilian dodges. Anyway, the cloister, which was stunningly beautiful, had gardens overlooking the bay of Palermo and an Arab-Norman church, whose ceilings were covered with Byzantine mosaics.
The cloister was supported by pairs of columns, covered in gold inlay and arabesques. Walking beneath the spectacular vault of the Duomo di Monreale while waiting for Vitalia that day, I experienced the unique pleasure of listening to the acanthus leaves pressed against the flowering capitals, as the light danced like a spirit from that world.
She was late, she wasn’t coming, I was going crazy. We’d decided to escape by sea. To take a boat. When I had worked myself into a state of complete despair, I saw Robinson rushing towards me, out of breath, his face drawn with tiredness.
“Sinbad, I’ve got some bad news.”
He fell silent.
“Speak to me, Robinson, speak to me!”
“Vitalia…”
“Has something happened to her?”
Robinson looked at me as if I were the sorriest wretch in the whole world, as if I deserved his deepest pity.
“She’s dead, Sinbad.”
The world was thrown off its axis and the daylight vanished. Darkness descended on the cloister and the columns blurred.
“What! You’re lying. You’re mad!”
Robinson wasn’t lying. The custodian had alerted Carlo Moro that his wife, Vitalia, had paid him to leave the cloister gates open. And he’d seen her with a tall black man. Carlo Moro then had Robinson followed and he found out Vitalia’s little game, although he didn’t understand the ins and outs of it. He saw her sorting her things, packing a suitcase and withdrawing money from the bank. He concluded that she was leaving with Robinson. Beside himself with jealousy, he’d murdered her as she was about to catch a taxi. Now Carlo Moro and his henchmen were scouring the town to find and kill Robinson. He didn’t know that I was the one whom Vitalia was preparing to join. But he wouldn’t spare my life either if he managed to get his hands on me. The Sicilian code was the most summary form of ju
stice in the world.
“I’m sorry, Sinbad… this wasn’t supposed to happen…”
We both had to go on the run. This time we took the first boat we could. It was a French-navy ship, La Marne, a refuelling tanker. They allowed us to come on board, even though it was against the rules. But Robinson went into great detail about our misfortunes and the danger we were in, owing to the Mafia and Carlo Moro, the scorned husband. That was enough to arouse every French seaman’s dormant patriotism. They promised to call at Tripoli, as Robinson wanted to travel through Libya before going home, and then Carthago, where I wanted to nurse my grief, weary of all these sad love affairs. All my hopes in this world ended with Vitalia’s death, so Carthago would make a wonderful tomb, a monastery, a huge psychiatric asylum, an open-air prison, and goodness knows what else: the arsehole of the world was perfect for me in my current state of mind. As you know, my lord, this town defies… description…
I’D PUT MY THINGS in Major Sied’s ship’s office. This was a large square room with a panoramic view of the sea and of La Marne. The Major was a plump, cheerful man with a splendid moustache. He was second to none when it came to telling jokes. He regarded us provisional seamen as complete rookies, greenhorns.
“The navy has its own language.”
And he handed me a dictionary.
“I’ve noticed you’re interested in the written word. A bed is a bunk, a stairway is a ladder. It’s easy enough to understand the first expression if you think about what a seaman might miss the most.”
He gave me a knowing wink. He sensed I was a man of unfathomable mystery. I was also an explorer of the deep, a swimmer in troubled waters. Anyway, Robinson had more or less put him in the picture about our Sicilian escapade. It explained my gloomy air, my Count of Monte Cristo demeanour, although without the desire for revenge. I really just felt a boundless sadness.
There wasn’t much of a female presence on La Marne. There were just three women for one hundred and sixty men. On “feminized” ships, explained the Major, nearly a quarter of the crew took the feminine plural, and the showers and toilets were not mixed.
“Showers for women. Whatever next?”
The Major wasn’t much of a progressive. He focused mainly on his work on board and the training of young seamen. Most of them had enlisted for the pay, and to see a bit of the world. This meant that when the ship put into port, they would rush over to the postcard-sellers to buy a souvenir to treasure. Some, after the regulation distribution of condoms, would make a beeline for the local prostitutes: doing the rounds of all the brothels and red-light districts on the planet was part of the French navy’s mission. I understood those decent men, whose families, thousands of miles away, were quietly waiting for Odysseus’s return. There was, when it came down to it, an unspoken rule, and sailors’ wives were not unaware of it: a man has needs… and so do women… Back on dry land, men often found their wives hadn’t waited for them: they’d run off with a landlubber. Others returned home after several decades at sea and no longer recognized their family. They got fed up, then divorced, then involved with someone else, age permitting. Otherwise, they merely drifted slowly towards the grave.
“It’s a tough job,” said Monsieur Bouillet, the second-in-command, who was a bit of a philosopher.
The man was a lover of pipes, real pipes made of meerschaum. In the evening, he would station himself on the bridge, facing out to sea, and smoke his tobacco from the islands. He would spend hours telling me about his voyages, from the Antipodes to the Indian Ocean. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he wasn’t overly bothered about the good things in life. His eyes shone with nostalgia for his journeys to foreign parts. He spoke about the land as if it were an unknown woman. An unfamiliar, indistinct woman. He had no family, and all he was interested in was the receding horizon, the storms and the tempests.
A sparrow alighted at the window of Major Sied’s ship’s office, frail and shivering in the wind battering the deckhouse. It was a long way from land.
“It’s vital not to chase it away, otherwise it’ll die of exhaustion and drown in the sea,” said Major Sied, sensitive to small things.
The Major was lord and master of that ship. Or so he thought. His superior, Commandant Bedaud, a former submariner, didn’t share his opinion. The Commandant was a playwright who had penned a play about Pontius Pilate, another famous leader of men. I was allowed to read it because he took a liking to me and thought me possessed of the cardinal virtues of any good critic: hypocrisy and kindness. He was our real lord and master, and he was entitled to preferential treatment. The play, which had never been performed, was about the conscience of a man, Pontius Pilate, whose sentencing was to alter the course of history. The play didn’t hang together since it had no dramatic progression and the characters were devoid of any psychological motivation; in short, it entirely lacked a playwright’s skill. I was careful not to tell him so, since I didn’t want anything to cut short my voyage, which would land me safe and sound in Carthago if I held my tongue.
“Don’t say a word, Sinbad, please don’t say a word,” begged Robinson. “Those weak-willed sailors are slave-traders. You don’t know them, you have no idea what lies deep in their souls, which are as unfathomable as the sea.”
“They are excellent men.”
“I wouldn’t stake my life on it. I’m sure they’ve inherited some fearful practices from their seafaring ancestors.”
“Myths, my dear Robinson. Do they eat people in Africa these days?”
“Cannibalism is a scientific fact, Sinbad. A trade-off. A kind of tribute.”
And Robinson began humming the popular children’s song about how to cook and eat a boy at sea:
There was a little ship
That had never sailed
Oh eh, oh eh, mate
Mate, sail onto the sea
SAFETY DRILL on board La Marne. The challenge: put out a fire on a boat awash with two types of fuel—F-76 for the ship and F-44 for planes—the main hazard on a ship which in theory never engaged in combat. These endless drills to keep up morale and maintain the physical fitness of the crew and paunchy officers were a real nuisance. The seamen ate well on board, a little too well perhaps; waistlines had a tendency to expand, and then they felt a pressing need to stay on the ball. Thousands of safety drills and countless assorted tricks were put in place to keep their bright-red pompons standing to attention. These ranged from simulated fires to shooting at dummies in the sea—and as no one volunteered to be sniped at, they launched white and red balloons and fired at them, all guns blazing. No one ever hit the targets, so I asked a young officer one day if we would have any chance of surviving an Al Qaeda attack.
“An attack at sea?” asked the young officer.
“Yes.”
“It would have to be by pedalo!”
And he began laughing.
“A refuelling tanker isn’t equipped to fight off an attack by a Zodiac packed full of explosives.”
“What would we do then?”
“We’d pray… that they’d have engine failure, and that there wasn’t another Zodiac out there…”
“So what are all these drills for?”
“For Somali pirates… they’re very effective against them…”
I slept in the same room as that young officer, who was a virgin. No twenty-year-old man boards a ship with other men unless he lacks sexual experience or is turning his back on life to some extent. What’s more, the young officer wanted to bury himself in a nuclear-powered attack submarine. He loved the machine. He dreamt about it on his bunk, the way other men cherish the faraway image of a woman. Not this young officer. He wanted to live in a suppository under the sea with eighty other men, going for months without seeing the sky.
“The missions are sometimes long,” the young officer told me.
“How long?”
“Between three and six months on board a submarine. It’s magical. Can you imagine? Nuclear propulsion is a technological masterpi
ece. They miniaturized a nuclear reactor so that it would fit in a submarine. It’s perfect. No way of communicating with anyone, for weeks, months…”
“What about your family? Your girlfriend?”
“It’s much better not to have a girlfriend, really… but it doesn’t bother me… I don’t understand women.”
“They’re not rocket science, you know.”
“I don’t know… I’m still young. I’d just love to get a posting on a nuclear-powered attack submarine.”
“So what floats your boat is something like the Sistine Chapel of weaponry?”
“Never seen the Sistine Chapel. Is it in Rome?”
In the engine room, the house of the dead, a noisy Hades, I met two of the other women on the boat, Tabatha and Samantha. The two engines had been so christened by the stokers who continually burned and inhaled diesel. You had to wear a noise-reduction helmet to descend into the belly of the whale. Behind a fire door, five or six seamen were sitting at security monitors in a stiflingly hot green room. There was the stink of burning diesel and you could lose pints of water in there. You had to keep rehydrating yourself.
“You get used to the smell and the heat,” one of the mechanics told me. “I don’t notice it any more.”
Later, another man confided that he’d also like to work on board a nuclear-powered submarine, so it was a common dream in the navy. Perhaps it was the poetry of the depths, or the appeal of technology due to an increase in video war games. I had no idea why they all wanted to be cooped up together in a metal cigar. You had to have no confidence in the future, to reject the world with all your might, with all the strength of a condemned man. Maybe those youngsters longed for the grave because they were deeply aware of the finite nature of things. I didn’t know, even though I understood their desire for a premature end, but I was much older than they were. I was clearly getting sentimental.