Time Is a Killer

by Michel Bussi

  But he had to do it.

  He had to feed his hatred.

  *

  * *

  Sunday, 13 August 1989, seventh day of the holidays

  Midnight-blue sky

  There’s a dance tonight.

  And I should tell you straight away, I’m not queen of the ball!

  I’m sitting a little bit away from the others, a bit in the shadows, on the sand with my book on my knees.

  When I say a dance, it’s really more of an impromptu party at the campsite, with three strings of bunting and the big boom-box that Hermann borrowed from his father, resting on a plastic chair. Nicolas has brought all the cassettes with the Top 50 hits he’s recorded straight off the radio, so we even get to hear the jingles and the ads between the songs.

  And there’s one in particular.

  THE hit of the summer!

  The hit that, if you’re lucky, my future reader, you will have never heard of because it’s going to disappear from everyone’s memories as quickly as it sucked the blood from them this summer.

  It’s a crazy thing, called the lambada.

  It’s really more of a dance than a song, and involves the boy sticking his thigh between the girl’s thighs. Against her pussy, to be absolutely straight about it.

  I kid you not.

  Just let anyone try that with me …

  There’s no risk of that happening, by the way. What boy my age would want to do that with a dwarf like me? It wouldn’t be his groin he was pressing against my pussy, it would be his knee! So I’m sitting here on my sandy cushion, dressed as a witch, reading Dangerous Liaisons.

  The campsite version.

  Basile Spinello just dropped by to tell us to turn down the music a bit.

  ‘Yes, Papa,’ Cervone, his twit of a son, said.

  I agree with Basile.

  The music is pollution. Music being wasted like that, I mean, not the kind that goes directly from your ears to your brain along the wires of a Walkman. The music that goes off into the void, flies off into nature, polluting it just the way greasy food wrappers or cigarette butts do, or the gravel of the Roc e Mare marina. It’s like a lack of respect for beauty, beauty that should never be disturbed or even shared. It should just be appreciated.

  Alone.

  Beauty is a secret. To talk about it is to violate it.

  That’s what Corsica is to me.

  It should be loved and left in peace.

  Basile has understood that.

  And so has my Papé Cassanu.

  And my father too, perhaps.

  As soon as Basile left, his son turned the volume back up, the beat of the lambada thumping out once more.

  There are about fifteen teenagers.

  They don’t even know La Mano or Nirvana; and what drives me mad is that in a year or two, they’ll think those groups are brilliant because everyone will think they’re brilliant.

  I’ve got my notebook open, resting on Dangerous Liaisons, but no one can see it. I can write in peace. I’ve told myself that I would introduce you to the tribe today. You’re going to have to follow me closely because it’s a bit complicated. I’m going to give each member of the gang a letter, to keep things simple.

  First of all there’s my brother Nicolas, crouching beside the boom-box. Let’s call him Valmont, because he’s handsome enough in his way and he’s incredibly successful with the girls, the way he acts all cool and never seems to get angry with anyone. I even have a theory about that. If you like everyone, it means you don’t really like anyone. So yes, I see my big brother Nicolas as Valmont, falling in love with all the girls in the world like an unhappy little angel, but unable to love only one.

  Nicolas is N.

  Beside him, the girl shaking her thing to ‘Billie Jean’ is Maria-Chjara. I’ll give you a detailed portrait of her later on, because that little flirt deserves a whole chapter to herself. But for now, just by way of introduction, let’s think of her as the Marquise de Merteuil. The manipulative courtesan in the novel. I don’t need to spell it out. You’ll have guessed that I hate Maria-Chjara, but it would take me a whole sleepless night to line up enough words to tell you just how much.

  Maria-Chjara is M.

  The one dancing off the beat, alone, as alone as me, except that I don’t show it, is Aurélia Garcia. You know her already: the killjoy. The policeman’s daughter, oh dear, the music is too loud, oh dear, I’m calling my father, oh dear oh dear, the lambada my God my God, boys, no no no … She scratches her eyebrows, smiles stupidly and is probably dreaming of a prince charming who would see stars in the reflection of her braces … Good luck with that, old thing!

  Aurelia is A.

  There are other girls – Véro, Candy, Katia, Patricia, Tess, Steph – but I’ll skip over them and move on to the boys, at least the ones who make me want to write mean things. The others, Filip, Ludo, Magnus, Lars, Tino, Estefan, are just normal, which is to say that they’re handsome, they drink beer, they laugh at rude jokes and they eye up normal girls.

  Which means they don’t see me.

  Estefan, with his fair hair in a ponytail and his southern accent, dreams of being a foreign-aid doctor and working in Ethiopia; Magnus wants to shoot the fourth episode of Star Wars; Filip to take off from Cape Canaveral on board the Columbia; but even describing these hot guys is making me feel depressed, so let’s move on.

  So, on the boys’ side there’s Cervone Spinello, who is negotiating with my brother, trying to persuade him to turn up the music even louder. ‘I promise you, Nico, it doesn’t matter, Papa won’t say anything.’ I’ve already told you a bit about him. The jerk is sure that he’s going to be manager of the campsite one day, so he’s already behaving like a little prince. The heir apparent, the king’s oldest son. Generally speaking, the heir apparent is usually incompetent and a pedantic fool. The two things go together when you have power. Cervone is like that. Will be like that.

  Cervone is C.

  I’ll finish with the cyclops. I call him that not because he roasts six at a time (hahaha) but because, however long you look at him, you will only ever see one of his eyes. So, Hermann the cyclops, always walking around in profile, and only ever looking in one direction. Towards Maria-Chjara.

  If you see Maria-Chjara, you won’t have to look for too long before spotting Hermann’s profile turned in her direction. If Maria-Chjara were the sun, Hermann would only be tanned on one side. Even though Hermann is German, you have to admit that he can jabber away in French and English quite well. He must be a kolossal talent back home, the kind who’s programmed to swot away and get full marks at school for ten months of the year and then to be a total misfit during the two months of summer.

  Hermann is H.

  Did you get all that?

  I’ll sum it up with a diagram of amorous geometry, a kind of dangerous liaisons for idiots. There is a circle, or rather two circles, with N (Nico) and M (Maria-Chjara) at their centre. The normal teens, the ones whose first names I’ve given you, are arranged in these circles. The girls in the circle N, the boys in the circle M.

  A (Aurélia) and C (Cervone) would like to enter the circle. H (Hermann) would like to draw a straight line to M (Maria). But that’s not the big question. The big question is: will the circles intersect, join, or be superimposed on one another?

  N ∩ M?

  N ∪ M?

  N = M?

  The answer is coming soon, don’t hang up, whatever you do, we’ve moved from the lambada to a slow dance. Scorpion’s guitars are weeping, swearing that they are ‘still loving you’. I listen, I admire, Nico’s cassettes are the very model of manipulation. He’s programmed this slow dance to come right after ‘Wake Me Up’, the bouncy rock track by Wham! The girls are drenched, their sweat running down their backs to their buttocks and their tops sticking to their nipples. Smart move, my bro!

  I move back gently, almost into the darkness, I only need a little light to go on writing.

  Couples form.

&
nbsp; Steph with Magnus, Véro with Ludo, Candy with Fred, Patricia hesitates between Estefan and Filip, Katia waits for her friend to decide, it’s the big summer supermarket. Serve yourself, it’s on sale, hurry up, must end by the last day of August.

  My buttocks retreat a few more centimetres towards the darkness. If one of these guys asks me to dance I’ll tell him to fuck off. And cry about it until the morning.

  No danger of that!

  Handsome George Michael is back with ‘Careless Whisper’.

  In my dark corner I’m enjoying myself, I’m enjoying myself, I’m enjoying myself.

  Are you listening to me, my trusted friend? I’m ENJOYING MYSELF! Like a little mouse in its hole.

  The first circle has just parted, my Nico has just let go of Tess, a Swedish girl, without so much as glancing at Aurélia, who was holding her arms out to him. Maria-Chjara has just let go of handsome Estefan. The king and queen of the ball are finally about to meet.

  Here it comes, the Marquise de Merteuil walks towards Valmont.

  One step, two steps, three steps beneath the strings of coloured lights.

  There are no circles now, just scattered teenage couples swaying to the weeping notes of a saxophone.

  Just two dots coming together.

  Maria-Chjara is wearing a white dress that changes colour as she walks with calculated slowness beneath each lightbulb in turn.

  Blue yellow red blue yellow red blue yellow red …

  Nicolas is standing under the last red light, wrapped among the branches of an olive tree.

  Blue yellow red blue yellow …

  She’s less than ten metres away from Nicolas now, then suddenly Maria-Chjara stops.

  Yellow …

  Perhaps she has sensed eyes upon her.

  Maria-Chjara moves away from the lights, her dress now lit only by moonlight.

  White.

  It’s the last thing I expected. Maria-Chjara has turned her back on my brother and is presenting her bare arms, her clammy breasts, her wet waist that a boy’s two hands could wrap around … to Hermann.

  The cyclops can’t believe his eyes.

  12

  14 August 2016, 6 p.m.

  Tomorrow, when you visit Arcanu Farm to see Cassanu and Lisabetta, please go and stand for a few minutes beneath the holm oak, before night falls, so that I can see you.

  Those few words, written in a hand so like her mother’s, were going round and round Clotilde’s head in a loop.

  Faster and faster.

  Tomorrow … so that I can see you …

  She struggled against two contradictory feelings, impatience and fear, like the feeling a lover gets, both electrifying and petrifying, the night before a first tryst.

  Tomorrow … the message said.

  So in less than two hours now. They were invited that evening to Arcanu Farm, to have dinner with the grandparents. Who would be there waiting for them? Who would see them?

  Clotilde hesitated by the mirror in the shower block. Should she let her long black hair hang loose over her shoulders, or put it up in a tight chignon? She didn’t dare consider the third option, of ruffling it up into a witch-like hedgehog the way she did when she was fifteen. Everything seemed muddled inside her head. She tried to concentrate and remember the details of her grandparents’ farm, the dust of the big sunny yard, the giant holm oak that would surely still cast its shade, the sea hidden behind the baked-clay buildings on the slope … but the next words of the letter were superimposed on these scraps of memory.

  I will recognise you, I hope.

  I would like your daughter to be there too.

  Clotilde had asked Valou to make an effort, to put on a long skirt and a top that wasn’t too low cut, to tie up her hair, and avoid chewing-gum and Ray-Bans. She had agreed grudgingly, without even trying to dispute the reason why she had to drop her tourist outfit to go and visit an eighty-nine-year-old great-grandfather and a great-grandmother of eighty-six.

  The shower block was deserted but for Orsu, who was going around it with a mop. He moved slowly, picking up the huge bucket with his good arm each time he went to clean the next shower. Clotilde had noticed that he cleaned each block every three hours, the same rhythm with which he approached the other tasks he was charged with: watering the flowerbeds, sweeping, weeding, lighting. It was slavery!

  Clotilde gave him a smile that he did not return. She was putting eye-liner on her eyes to give them a dark oriental depth, slightly Gothic, perhaps, even if she refused to admit it, when two teenagers came in behind her.

  With mud-encrusted trainers on their feet and cycling helmets in their hands, fluorescent protectors on their knees and elbows, they made straight for the toilets and came out a few moments later. They stared with disgust at the muddy trails they had left across the wet tiles. The taller of the two stopped, as if faced with impassable quicksand, then turned towards Orsu.

  ‘It’s filthy!’

  The other one stepped forward carefully so as not to slip, avoiding the damp traces of soil and therefore dirtying another part of the floor.

  ‘You’re disgusting, Hagrid. Why don’t you do the bogs first thing in the morning, or at night, when no one’s around?’

  The other one backed him up. He was thirteen at most, with a branded pair of underpants peeping out above his tight cycling shorts.

  ‘That’s right, Hagrid, that’s how it works. At school, at my dad’s office, even on the street. Taking the bins out, cleaning up shit, you do that when people are asleep or away.’

  The smaller one, twelve years old tops and wearing an XXL Waikiki T-shirt that fell past his bottom, added:

  ‘That’s how you do the job, Hagrid. It’s about service, respecting your customer, having a sense of what the tourist wants. You see, Hagrid, the bogs have to be spanking clean and you’ve got to be invisible. The shit has to disappear as if by magic. We shouldn’t even know you exist.’

  Orsu opened frightened eyes. Clotilde saw no hatred in them, only fear. Fear of these two little idiots, of what they might say, what they might report back. Perhaps even the fear of disappointing them.

  Clotilde hesitated. In her younger days she would have gone in with her head lowered.

  She gauged her reaction time at three seconds before turning towards the taller one. Three seconds. Before launching off she reflected that she hadn’t really aged that much.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Umm … Why?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Cédric.’

  ‘Cédric what?’

  ‘Cédric Fournier.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Maxime. Maxime Chantrelle.’

  ‘OK, well we’ll see about this later.’

  ‘You’ll see about what, miss?’

  ‘Whether I’m going to put in a complaint.’

  The two boys looked at each other uncomprehendingly. Report this guy for not using the mop properly? That was crazy. They didn’t want to go that far.

  ‘Whether I’m going to put in a complaint about the harassment of an employee who is going about his duties, insults that constitute,’ here she rested her eyes on Orsu’s stiff arm, ‘the abuse of authority towards a third party.’

  ‘Are you serious, miss?’

  ‘Not miss. You can address me as Maître. Maître Baron, lawyer, IENA and Associates, Vernon.’

  The boys looked at each other again. Aghast.

  ‘Let’s get out of here!’

  They vanished.

  Again Orsu didn’t return her smile. Never mind. Clotilde turned back to the mirror, proud of having put the wind up the little fools. She studied the bearded giant out of the corner of her right eye, the one already underlined in black. Orsu stood there for a moment, not moving, then plunged the mop back into his bucket and immediately took out another clean one.

  Clotilde’s black-lined eye froze, as if trapped; she was seized by a violent feeling of vertigo, and held on to the wall of the shower block with
both hands, dropping her eye-liner into the sink.

  She tried to steady her breathing, to calm herself, to rewind the scene she had just witnessed, watching Orsu’s trivial gesture in slow motion. Throwing a dirty mop in the bucket and taking out a different, clean one.

  Impossible, impossible, impossible.

  The black drip from the eye-liner slid slowly towards the plug-hole, like a snake returning to its lair.

  A trivial gesture.

  Orsu had already turned his back on her and was using a stiff-bristled brush to erase the traces of the young idiots’ footsteps.

  An unreal gesture … from the other side.

  She was going mad.

  ~

  ‘You look lovely, Valentine …’

  Cervone Spinello was standing by reception at the Euproctes campsite, holding his mobile phone, greeting people as they went in and out like a laid-back monitor watching kids coming and going from school. His wife, behind the counter, was talking in perfect English to some Scandinavian tourists who had set rucksacks twice as heavy and bulky as themselves by the counter. Anika was tall, smiling, elegant; refined, attentive and very busy. She was both the heart and the lungs of the Euproctes campsite, its supplementary soul, its patron saint. Cervone was only the priest.

  Valentine stopped and turned towards the manager of the campsite.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She pointed to her hair, which was held back by a modest headscarf, and the long skirt that fell to her ankles, then murmured confidentially:

  ‘I’m on duty. In two hours’ time we’re having dinner with the grandparents.’

  ‘Cassanu and Lisabetta? At Arcanu Farm?’

  Valentine nodded with a mocking smile, and brought her hand to her hair to push a rebellious tendril back under the salmon-coloured cloth. She stared at the poster displaying the plans for the Roc e Mare marina.

  ‘According to Maman, we’re to avoid talking about your palace in front of Papé.’

  Behind them, Anika had got up to guide the Swedish girls, bent double under their luggage, around the free sites. Cervone put his phone in his pocket and took Valou by the shoulder, giving her a quarter turn so that she was facing a big map of Corsica. His finger traced across the Mediterranean then stopped in the middle of the big blue.