The cop says all this in a quiet voice, arms crossed on the table, leaning towards André. The waiter brings them their coffees so he falls silent, eyes glistening, panting slightly, maybe a bit proud of himself.
André drains his cup in a single mouthful. The coffee is lukewarm, too sweet. Leaving the other man to do the same, he gets to his feet, opens his wallet and drops a banknote on the table.
“What are you doing? Are you leaving?”
“What do you think? I need to walk. I can’t breathe in this place.”
Mazeau looks around, as if looking for a source of heat or a broken fan.
“I’ll call you,” André says. “I do really need to get going.”
As he walks past the cop, he puts a hand on his shoulder in a gesture of consolation, or excuse. He doesn’t really know why he does it, in fact. He leaves the café and the air is cool on his neck so he tightens his scarf and walks quickly towards rue Sainte Catherine, full of parked cars and groups of pedestrians who wind between the smoking hoods in single file. He goes down to the Garonne and the wind brings tears to his eyes. Wiping them away with the back of his hand, he tries to shake off that feeling of suffocation by breathing through his mouth in time with his strides, like an athlete.
Close to rue des Menuts, he suddenly turns on his heel, colliding with an old man locked in a struggle with his dog’s leash, and walks for about fifty meters. There’s a break in traffic and he quickly crosses the road. Once he’s on the other side, he looks back across the street to see if anyone is following him.
He goes home, turning around frequently, sometimes retracing his steps. He is not proud of these spy-film precautions, but after listening to Mazeau and scrutinising his false facial expressions and his lying hand movements, he is tormented by the conviction that he cannot trust this cop, or any other cops, that perhaps he can’t trust anyone at all.
In the afternoon he tries to sleep but can only doze as his heart is racing. Then he picks up a notebook and begins writing. He writes for a long time. His thoughts are unordered, a mass of memories that come to him randomly, like big fish rising up from a dying pond and struggling, mouths agape, on its surface.
He waits for nightfall, which comes suddenly with the rain. For a moment, he listens to the soft sound from the gutters, the erratic ticking of the drips, and he stares out through the window at the vague glimmers spreading over the cobbles on the street. He absorbs this discreet confusion, detecting its nuances, its rhythms and melodies and syncopations. He has never been to a concert, he knows nothing about music, but he remembers that Hungarian, Gregor, the cellist, who at night in the camp would listen to every sound possible, even sounds he never thought he could hear, and would describe them in a whisper. “And that, can you hear it? A kapo walking through a puddle of mud. His footsteps are heavy and slow. He’s drunk. And now someone scratching his balls. You can hear his fingernails rustling in the hair.” Once he had heard a man’s final breath. He spoke a word, a name perhaps, as he died. Afterwards they had listened to the silence that reached them from the place where the dead man lay, at the other end of the shelter, blowing on them like a soundless wind. And then they had discussed, in whispers, what he might have said. “I think I know who I would call out for,” André had said, “if I had the strength. If I didn’t die in my sleep.” Once, an airplane had flown over, high in the sky. Gregor had located the rumbling note of the engines and had held it until the end of his gasping breath, gripping his sleeve, interrupted by a cough and by sobs. He died before he could hear the thunder of artillery fire moving closer and filling their nights while they waited, deaf to all the rest.
He shakes himself and stands up. Dresses, trembling, then leaves.
It’s a cellar bar. There are dozens of others just like it in the city, selling cheap reds in bulk to guys who come with their crates of empty bottles, as well as more expensive, elaborate vintages or wines from little-known chateaux passed around on the sly as if they were smuggling something shameful.
A man sits alone at a table, bellowing about a friend of his who won ten million on the lottery and died behind the wheel of the Mercedes he bought himself after dumping his wife, who would have preferred to spend the money on a trip to America.
“That’s fate, that is, fuck’s sake! There’s nothing you can do about that! The guy would rather have a new motor than his wife or America—what can you do? And it’s the same for me!”
“Hardly surprising,” says a big man leaning on the bar, a glass of red in hand, “given what your missus looks like! But if I were you, I’d change my car instead. It’s easier!”
“I’d take my wife to Noo-York! She’s never stopped talking about it since she saw Americans during the Liberation. Near Paris, she was. And on the way back—boom!—I’d get another wife and buy myself a Chambord! If you’ve got cash, they don’t give a shit if you’re ugly or your feet stink. All they see is the dough!”
The three other customers laugh and drink to madame’s health, while the man shifts in his chair, the laughter dying in his throat.
André approaches the counter and Couchot moves towards him, still laughing, gesturing with his chin to ask what he wants. André hesitates. He glances at the bottles lined up behind the man, who stares at him.
“I dunno . . . A dessert wine.”
“I’ll do you a glass of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont. I’ve got some of that in the fridge. You’ll see, it’s not bad at all.”
The glass is cold in his hands. Golden sparkles in the hollow made by his palms. He smells the wine and his mouth fills with saliva. Scents he doesn’t recognize, a mingling of sweet aromas. He drinks a mouthful and it makes him feel better. He lifts his head and looks around at the little bistro, at the men laughing and ordering another round. Near the back, on the right-hand wall, he sees a door marked “It’s through here” and he walks towards it, turning back to the landlord, who nods at him.
Dark corridor. He stands still for a moment as his eyes adjust and he sees a line of light under the outside door and his hand gropes for a light switch. A weak yellowish glow, splashed like dirty water over the leprous walls. He walks to the back, where a door opens onto a tiny courtyard. There he sees a narrow little bungalow, solid outer shutters closed against the few rays of light that penetrate the louvred shutters. Inside, a radio is singing. To his left, the toilet door, with a heart-shaped hole cut out of it. The bulb inside illuminates only the hole. Squares of newspaper are hung to the end of a metal wire. A water jug that might be empty: he doesn’t know, doesn’t look.
He goes back into the corridor and walks to the outside door. No bolt or anything. He wonders then if they close the door to the bar.
Back in the main room, the laughter and the ranting have ceased. He walks back to the counter and picks up his glass under the watchful eye of Couchot, who is smoking a Gitane. André gestures to his glass.
“Do you sell this? It’s really good.”
The landlord moves closer, cigarette hanging from his mouth, and looks at him, one eye blinking in the stinging smoke.
“Yeah, I sell it. You live in the quarter?”
“A bit further off. Cours de l’Yser. Been there two months.”
“Are you Spanish?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Cos it’s full of Spaniards over there.”
“No. I came from Toulouse. I was there for my job though: I was born here.”
“Loads of Dagos over there as well. And you don’t have the accent.”
“You don’t seem to like them much?”
“I’ve got family in Toulouse. They know all about the Spanish there. As far as I’m concerned, they’re lazy bastards. Came and invaded us cos of their war. Bloody Commies. And they’re still coming cos they’re starving in Spain, not that I give a shit. I do have some good Spanish customers though. Every Dago I know has a strong drinking arm.”
>
André finishes his drink. He invents a smile and sticks it to his face.
“What’s better, a strong drinking arm or a strong fighting arm?”
Couchot squints at him.
“That’s not bad. I might use that. And what’s your answer?”
“There’s a good reason why God gave us two arms.”
Couchot does not reply. He opens a trapdoor and goes down to the cellar. André hears the sharp clinking of glass. The landlord climbs back up, holding a bottle.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Four hundred and fifty.”
“Plus the glass.”
“Nah, it’s on the house. Free taster.”
Couchot wraps the bottle in newspaper. André pays with a five-hundred-franc bill and drops the change into his trouser pocket. He takes his leave, and exits at the same time as another man, unsteady on his feet. The man who told that story about the idiot who died in a Mercedes. He starts laughing, out on the sidewalk, alone, leaning against a car. André walks quickly away, almost running, acid at the back of his mouth.
He vomits in the gutter. The wine is now nothing more than bitter puke, burning his throat. Further on, blinded by tears, he throws the bottle into the darkness, relieved to hear it explode on the cobblestones.
12A homage to the novel Tre Cavalli, by Erri De Luca.
13Section Atterrissage Parachutage—the parachute regiment of the French Resistance’s “shadow army” in the Second World War.
11
The man is stretched out below the counter, the broken bottle sunk smack in the middle of his face, the neck emerging incongruously from the pulp of flesh, cap still screwed on. Bourbon. Darlac knows this brand. He tasted it once then spat it out straight away. He hates the pukey taste of those cheap Yank drinks. Same goes for whisky. Worse, in fact. He’s heard people say it tastes like peat. Yeah, right. Stop drinking compost, you asshole, and shut your mouth.
Blood everywhere. Throat cut open. One blow to make him bleed, the second to disfigure him. Darlac leans over the carnage. One eye remains, half open. As for the other . . . The commissaire gives up trying to list the nature of the wounds. The coroner can write all that, if he feels like it, and, more to the point, if anyone’s interested. The dead man is Roger Chavignon, thirty-five, who would come here to get drunk from time to time until he started falling off his chair and trying to start fights with the other customers and the landlord had to throw him out. Monsieur, normally so quiet and peaceful, almost shy, was a nasty drunk. Maybe that was why he used to get assholed? So people would notice him, listen to him. Who knows . . . He lives, or lived, with a wife and brood of kids on rue des Menuts, not far from here. Part-time warehouseman at the Capucins, where he would sometimes help out selling vegetables. The commissaire contemplates this cretin and the bottle that seems to be bursting from his brain like a sudden thought, and says to himself, well, that’s one less loser on earth. He imagines the investigation showing that he used to beat his wife—and his kids, because guys like this are very keen on reproducing—and that his wife put up with the fear and the bruises and that she’ll be here soon, throwing herself sobbing on the body of her lord and master.
Some people, Darlac thinks, deserve the shit they’re stuck in. They consent to live amid the misery that has been deliberately created for them. But as a cop, he is there to ensure that the mire does not overflow, that the poor don’t start taking justice into their own hands, just in case it occurs to them to blame the people who are truly responsible for their sad fate. That is how the world works. If everyone knows their place, the herd will be kept in line.
The culprit is sitting at the back of the room, in handcuffs, between two uniforms. He cried earlier, wiping his eyes with his blood-soaked sleeves. He was caught by some customers as he was trying to scarper. They duly pinned him to the floor and smashed him over the head with a chair before disappearing so they wouldn’t get into trouble. A little pimp who got two of his own cousins to work the streets. Jean-Pierre Lopez. He lives with his mum, who looks after his books, having raised the orphans—her brother’s daughters—after their parents’ death. She is paying herself back what she is owed . . . It’s not cheap, two little tarts to feed and clothe, little ingrates who would have just legged it as soon as they turned eighteen without even a thank-you, as if they hadn’t done everything they were supposed to do for them.
The chief would not have bothered coming here were it not for the fact that the guy was found with a gun. A big one, professional. He hadn’t used it in the bar, admittedly, but that was just because he’d been saving it for something more important. A loser like him, on a big case, it’s delicious: it turns around and bends over like a randy faggot and it says Mass for you before it gets taken.
Darlac nicked the father two years ago, the dominant male of the herd, now doing a ten-year stretch in Toulouse for being an accessory to murder. An active accessory, of course, a fact that the court was only able to establish due to a crafty lawyer. Like father . . . We all know the rest of the phrase, even if Darlac does not hold much with these so-called common-sense aphoristic predestinations. He goes up to the prodigal son and sits down on the other side of the table.
“So, Lopez, you still don’t want to tell us why you killed Roger? You know it’d be in your favour if you confessed. Judges like honesty. So do we, for that matter. Remember what happened to your father. Wanted to fool the world and ended up getting the maximum sentence.”
Lopez shakes his head.
“No,” he says. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
“Nothing to do with us? Are you sure? You slit a guy’s throat in a public place in front of six witnesses and now you’re trying to be discreet about it? What’s this about? Some chick? A whore? The others say he was asking for it, that he went at you suddenly even though he hadn’t even finished his first bottle. You know this bar?”
The pimp stares down at his fingers.
“Alright. You can tell us all that later. You’ll be going straight to jail anyway, and by the time you get out you’ll be half dead and senile. Tell me: where did you get your gun?”
Lopez looks up at him, surprised.
“Gun?”
“Yeah, the pistol, if you prefer. An 11.43. Nice weapon.”
“Oh, yeah. A friend lent it to me.”
“Friend’s name?”
“Can’t say.”
Darlac’s hand is crushing the man’s face before anyone even saw him move. The chair shakes, and the two uniform cops move prudently aside.
“Friend’s name?”
Lopez starts to sob silently, his whole body trembling.
“Shit, I don’t know! I met him in a bar, one evening. We had friends in common, acquaintances, so we got talking, just like that, and he offered to lend me a gun so I could do some shooting practice. That’s all there is to it, I’m telling you.”
Darlac grabs him by his shirt collar and shakes him. He wants to squeeze his throat between his hands now, on either side of his Adam’s apple, and watch him turn blue.
“Don’t push it, you little shit. Tell me where you got that gun.”
He lets go. The pimp collapses into himself, his head bobbing, face sulky like a chastened kid’s. He blubbers and sniffs. This pathetic clown is beginning to soften. What comes next should be a formality.
“This guy called Raymond. He’s often in the Escale, on the docks.”
“And you go into the woods to shoot at trees, is that it?”
The man looks up surprised, wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand.
“Yeah, something like that, yeah . . . To know how it works.”
Darlac pats his shoulder and grins wolfishly at him.
“You’re a good kid, I knew it. You’re a bit like your dad: not bad, just stupid. Except here, you killed a man. So you’d better be helpful,
if you don’t want to end up with your neck on the guillotine.”
He stands up and signals a detective, Lefranc, who is listening to the bistro landlord giving him the lowdown on every customer he’s ever had, whining all the while that he has never seen anything like this before, because this is a peaceful establishment that closes at eight sharp every evening after the last aperitif, Inspecteur sir, sometimes not even giving the players enough time to pick up their cards.
“Come on, we’ve heard enough. Let’s take him to the station—he has some explaining to do. You warn the public prosecutor’s office. I want to be able to keep him. I’ll call the prosecutor myself later tonight.”
Instantly, the cops get moving. Two stretcher-bearers arrive noisily, banging the stretcher into everything, and throw a khaki blanket over the dead man and the bottle in his face. Then they lift him up with a heave-ho, sending a kepi rolling along the floor. At the other end of the room, Lopez is dragged to his feet and taken outside.
“The boss wants to talk to you. And only you,” says Lefranc.
Darlac sighs, glances at his watch and walks over to the landlord.
After the War Page 14