by Michel Bussi
Cassanu and Lisabetta were waiting on the doorstep. Even though Clotilde hadn’t seen them for twenty-seven years, they didn’t seem much older than they were in her memories. She had always remained in regular contact with them; the odd postcard, a birth notice, some photographs, always accompanied by a few words. Nothing more than that. Her paternal grandparents had long ago stopped setting foot on the mainland, and it had taken Clotilde a long time before she had the courage to return to the site of the accident.
It was Lisabetta who kissed them, hugged them and held them tightly. Not Cassanu, who merely shook hands with Franck, first of all, and then greeted Clotilde and Valou.
It was Lisabetta who invited them in, told them to make themselves at home, who came out with an uninterrupted flood of words, not Cassanu, who already seemed weary of conversation.
It was Lisabetta who showed them around the farmhouse, a succession of rooms with the same drystone walls, and huge exposed beams, not Cassanu, who waited for them, sitting at the table under the pergola in the farmyard.
Other faded images hovered in the fog of Clotilde’s memory. The cupboards under the wooden staircase where she had played hide and seek with Nicolas every summer; a huge fireplace that she had never seen lit, but where she imagined they could have roasted a whole shark; the view over the sea from each window on every floor, and her mother calling to her not to lean out; the attic as high as a cathedral where they had taken refuge with cousins or local children, furnishing it with blankets, mattresses and sheets attached to the beams with drawing pins. A palace for ghosts, or a place for cuddles.
The real photographs, those framed on the walls, weren’t there twenty-seven years ago. Clotilde recognised Cassanu, Lisabetta, Papa, sometimes in close-up. She recognised herself too, and Nicolas – she in her christening dress and her brother as a first communicant. In another photo they were both climbing a Genovese bridge above a waterfall. She had no memory of the place or the year when the photograph was taken, but she didn’t care, she just allowed herself to be submerged in the emotions it evoked.
There wasn’t a single photograph of her mother.
Not one.
In some photographs, on the other hand, mostly hidden behind Cassanu and Lisabetta, Clotilde recognised the claw-fingered witch, the one they had passed on the road leading up to the farm. A little further down, pinned on to the wall, she spotted some photographs she had sent years ago: her and Franck on the Rialto in Venice; Valentine on a tricycle; all three of them, hats on their heads, posing in front of Mont-Saint-Michel. Clotilde was hypnotised by the pictures, moving from one to the next, inviting the generations to meet inside her head.
It was Lisabetta who urged her to go and sit down because it was getting late. Papé seemed to be dozing in his chair when they came back out into the yard. When they were all seated under the pergola, it was Cassanu who spoke, however, while Lisabetta disappeared into the background, flitting between the kitchen and the terrace, cutting bread and pouring Corsican wine, bringing plates of ham and sausages and jugs of water.
The meal seemed endless. After rushing through their shared memories, the conversation seemed to flag, each subject eked out like a scarce resource. Clotilde couldn’t help staring at the sun that was dipping down towards the sea like a huge clock fixed to the end of the table.
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.
Before nightfall …
The sky was turning red, and Clotilde’s face was also flushed as she got to her feet. Lisabetta had just served the pudding.
‘Excuse me. Excuse me, just for a moment,’ she stammered.
She took Valou’s hand.
‘Come with me, don’t ask any questions. Come on. We’ll only be a few minutes.’
~
Franck and Cassanu had stayed at the table.
Lisabetta cleared the plates and cutlery with unusual speed, leaving the men with some glasses and a bottle of lemon liqueur, before mysteriously disappearing. Cassanu smiled and looked at his watch.
‘Lisabetta will join us again in twenty minutes,’ the old man explained. ‘My wife is the perfect hostess, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. But she is willing to defy three generations of Corsican hospitality in order not to miss an episode of Plus belle la vie …’
The scene struck Franck as surreal. Hidden away, five hundred metres up, three kilometres away from the nearest house, in the heart of Corsica, watching a soap opera set in Marseille …
Life was strange indeed.
Cassanu was an intelligent man, astonishingly quick, and still seemed to be physically active. The kind of man he himself got along with. And the kind of man he would like to remain, despite the passing years. Straight, determined, intransigent if necessary; good, solid hands to lead a family, a square face behind which strong convictions were stored in an orderly fashion, and a hard skull to stop him from changing them.
Franck wet his lips with the lemon-flavoured drink and studied Clotilde, who was standing fifty metres away, with Valou, under the holm oak.
‘I don’t know what she’s up to,’ he admitted to Cassanu.
His embarrassment sounded like an apology, but Cassanu seemed amused.
‘She’s going back to her childhood. Perhaps even further than that, to her roots. Clotilde has changed a lot since the last time I saw her.’
Franck thought of the surreal photos of his wife as a teenager. Her hedgehog hair. The way she dressed like an undertaker. He imagined the Goth rebel probably had some trouble blending in with the local environment back then.
‘I suppose.’
Cassanu raised his glass. Men together. As if this were some kind of initiation ritual into the Idrissi family.
‘What do you do for a living, Franck?’
‘I work in Evreux. A small town about an hour from Paris. I coordinate the parks department.’
‘Did you start out as a gardener?’
‘Yes. I slowly climbed my way up, like some kind of wisteria, ivy or mistletoe … That’s probably how my colleagues see me.’
Cassanu looked again at Clotilde and Valou. He seemed pensive, perhaps thinking of his son who had also studied agronomy before ending up selling turf.
‘You know why, about fifty years ago I called this campsite, the first one in the whole north-west of the island, Les Euproctes?’ the old Corsican went on.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘It might interest you. The euprocte is a small salamander, a species endemic to the island. It lives near water, under rocks, and likes to find quiet places to sleep during the day. It’s now a protected species. Its presence is an indicator of the quality of the water, but not only that, it’s also a measure of the peacefulness of a place, the absence of noise, of movement, of intrusion, a kind of balance, if you like. There used to be hundreds of euproctes around Arcanu and the campsite, all the way over to Revellata Bay.’
‘And now?’
‘And now they’re leaving … same as everybody else.’
Franck hesitated, drank half his glass and then decided to test the old man a little.
‘Surely not everybody? I have a sense that new things are being built around here. The campsite, the Roc e Mare marina.’
Cassanu merely smiled. Nothing trembled, not his hands nor his voice.
‘In seventy years, Franck, the price of land in this rocky corner overlooking the sea has gone up by 800 per cent. Since they announced the construction of the marina it has doubled again. Almost 5,000 euros per square metre. So yes, Franck, everybody’s clearing off. And that will go on as long as Corsicans don’t have residential status. For every individual who spends a fortune on an apartment in that marina and comes to live here for two months a year, there are thirty local young people who can’t find a place to live. It’s too expensive! Even if they’re being given the option of diving into the water at the palace ten week
ends a year.’
Cassanu had raised his voice slightly. Franck didn’t agree with the patriarch’s line of reasoning. Corsica wasn’t the only place to undergo property speculation. And the fine houses, the fine cars, the yachts and private jets, were the stuff of fantasy rather than a cause for complaint, even if he could never afford such luxuries himself.
But he didn’t reply, he didn’t want to have an argument with his wife’s grandfather. The most powerful man in the district, from what people said.
He turned towards the holm oak.
‘Are you coming back, Clo?’
‘Yes, I’ll be right with you.’
On the horizon, the ball of fire gently fell into the Mediterranean.
~
Valou groaned.
‘What are we doing, Maman?’
‘We’re waiting, just a bit longer.’
‘Until when?’
‘Until it gets dark.’
Ignoring her daughter’s sighs, Clotilde slowly scanned the surrounding countryside again. Slightly elevated on the knoll where the oak grew, she had a three hundred and sixty-five degree view.
Go and stand for a few minutes beneath the holm oak, before night falls, so that I can see you.
Was the author of the message watching her … watching them, her and Valou?
Who?
Where?
There were a million places she could be seen from: anywhere at all on the mountain, which formed a huge amphitheatre to the east and the south; by anyone hidden in the maquis with a pair of binoculars. Unless the watcher were somewhere close by, behind one of the windows overlooking the yard, in the barn to her right, the shed to her left, or in one of the shepherds’ huts scattered around the meadows that sloped gently towards the mountain range.
It could be anybody.
Anywhere.
‘Shall we go, Maman?’
The sun had drowned once and for all. It was hopeless; whoever the watcher was, they weren’t going to reveal themselves. They might still be watching if they had a pair of infra-red goggles.
It was pathetic! She was going mad. Cassanu and Lisabetta must have been wondering what she was doing there and Franck would curse her all evening for having abandoned him at the table with her grandfather.
‘Yes, Valou, off you go.’
In the mountains, towards the peninsula and along the Bay of Calvi, lights were coming on. Clotilde was just an ant in an apparently infinite field, frightened by the glow-worms. A shadow suddenly passed by the entrance to the yard. It stopped and stared at her before disappearing into the darkness of the barn. Clotilde had just enough time to recognise the witch, the old woman who had cursed them on the road and who appeared in the photographs with Cassanu and Lisabetta.
A few stars already shone above the mountains, like shepherd’s huts which had been inadequately bound to the earth and flown away.
I ask nothing else of you. Nothing at all.
Or perhaps just that you raise your eyes to the sky and look at Betelgeuse. If you only knew, my Clo, how many nights I have looked at it and thought of you.
Which of those stars was Betelgeuse? She had no idea.
Was someone, somewhere, really trying to contemplate the star at the same time as she was? Were they looking in the same direction in a kind of communion, like Saint-Exupéry looking for the Little Prince’s asteroid?
Was it her mother?
It didn’t make sense.
Move, Clotilde told herself. Go back and join Franck, apologise, talk a little more, then leave and forget it all.
The dog left the road and came into the yard just as Clotilde was about to descend from the knoll and return to the pergola. In the gloom she couldn’t make out the exact colour of its coat, but the animal was as fat as a Labrador. A sheepdog, probably. Clotilde liked dogs, as she liked animals in general. She wasn’t afraid of them; in another life, she would have loved to be a vet. Besides, why be afraid of this dog that was running towards her? Cassanu would call off the great beast before it jumped up at her knees or slobbered over her dress. Her grandfather imposed his authority on every Corsican within a radius of thirty kilometres, so he wasn’t about to be disobeyed by a dog.
But Cassanu Idrissi didn’t say a word, didn’t make any kind of gesture.
As the dog approached the hand that Clotilde held out to him, a new shadow broke away from the entrance to the yard. A massive shadow, its arm raised towards the dog, giving precise orders.
Orsu!
A second later, Clotilde heard his voice.
‘Stop, Pacha. Wait here, by my foot.’
The dog froze and didn’t touch her. It was a particularly gentle-looking dog, with humorous eyes that doubtless allowed it to run rings around the goats in its charge. Yet Clotilde’s body slowly collapsed against the trunk of the oak, then, centimetre after centimetre, slid down, as though her legs could no longer carry her, until she found herself sitting trembling on the grass.
Pacha watched her in astonishment, hesitating whether to lick her arm or her cheek, level with its muzzle.
‘Pacha, heel,’ Orsu ordered again.
Pacha.
The name rattled around inside Clotilde’s brain, but rather than belonging to a Labrador, it had belonged to a small mongrel of dubious pedigree that her mother had given her for her first Christmas. She had been less than a year old.
Pacha.
HER dog.
For the first seven years of her life, Clotilde had carried the dog in her arms, taken him for walks in her buggy, secretly stuffed him with squares of chocolate and sugar lumps. Pacha had gone everywhere with her, like a living toy that didn’t leave her even at nap time or at night; who slept on her bed, who lay tucked up beside her on the back seat of the Fuego. Then one day Pacha had jumped over the fence and he wasn’t there when she came back from school with Maman. He had never come back. She had never seen him again. She had never forgotten him either.
Orsu whistled, and at last the dog ran back towards his master.
Surely it was just a coincidence, Clotilde reasoned, trying to calm her crazed thoughts. Another coincidence. There must be thousands of dogs in France called Pacha.
The Labrador was no more than ten years old. So it had been born many years after her family had died in the accident. Almost twenty years later. So why would anyone give him the same name as a mongrel from Normandy? A mongrel that had died in 1981? A mongrel that had never set foot in Corsica, since her mother’s parents looked after it every year? A mongrel that Cassanu, Lisabetta and Orsu couldn’t have known anything about?
Clotilde noticed that Franck was getting up under the pergola. Valou was sitting a little way off on the wooden bench, her fluorescent headphones in her ears.
‘Shall we go, Clo?’
Like mother, like daughter, Cassanu and Lisabetta must have thought. At that moment her grandmother came out into the yard and hugged Orsu as if he were her son.
‘Yes, let’s go,’ said Clotilde.
It wasn’t easy to refuse. It wasn’t easy to linger. By standing alone under the oak like that, Clotilde had hardly demonstrated an acute sense of family.
My whole life is a dark room.
In Beetlejuice, young Lydia Deetz has the gift of being able to talk to ghosts. Perhaps Clotilde possessed that gift as well?
Before. When she was fifteen.
She had lost it now. She hadn’t come into contact with a ghost that evening.
Apart from the ghost of her dog. Her mongrel.
Reincarnated as a Labrador.
15
Monday, 14 August, eighth day of the holidays
Forget-me-not-blue sky
I admit it. I don’t often write to you twice during the same day. I usually pick up my pen in the morning when everyone’s still asleep, or in the evening, hidden in the Cave of Sea-Calves, by the light of my torch, being devoured by mosquitoes just for you, my reader in the stars.
This morning, you’ll remember, I told you ab
out the concert of polyphonic music instead of the anniversary meal at Casa di Stella. And Maman saying nothing. Nothing at all. Which was worse than anything. Nico and me watching the collateral damage.
Boom! The first bombs went off on the Island of Beauty.
Shall I tell you about it?
The whole of the holy Idrissi family had gathered this afternoon on Rue Clemenceau in Calvi, the big shopping street, for, what shall I call it? A game of poker? I think that life as a couple is pretty much that – a game of poker.
A game of bluff.
Imagine a narrow street, on a slope, absolutely crammed, worse than Mont-Saint-Michel on an Easter weekend.
That’s Calvi. This afternoon.
Maman is dawdling, waits, slows down, speeds up, always a bit ahead, or behind. Lingering just a little bit longer than usual in front of the shop windows. Just a little less chatty. While she’s doing this, Papa is frying in the sun at the bottom of the steps that lead up to the citadel, killing time as best he can with Nicolas, taking a few photographs of the harbour below, admiring the yachts, eyeing up the Italian girls. Maman seems magnetised by a shoe-shop. At last she regretfully drags herself away but stops again outside Benoa, a shop that sells Corsican clothes. They’re really classy and original. Scraps of fabric that look as if they’re worth a fortune, on plastic mannequins that don’t necessarily have better figures than my mother.
I watch. The Cure is playing through my headphones. I listen to ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, ‘Charlotte Sometimes’ and ‘Lovecats’ on a loop. I don’t care. My goal is up at the top.
I think it took us an hour to get to the ramparts, and Maman still wasn’t saying a word. The first thing she did say was just before we got to the drawbridge at the entrance to the citadel, by the column which claims that Christopher Columbus was born here (sometimes the Corsicans really make me laugh!).