Time Is a Killer

by Michel Bussi

  Otherwise everything is fine.

  Love and kisses.

  Clo.

  Yes, I know, it’s short. Apologies!

  For two days now, ever since I met Natale, ever since my heart has rocked to the rhythm of his boat, I’ve distanced myself slightly from the tribe of teenagers and all their tribulations. I see Maria-Chjara walking by in the distance, it’s weird, she’s painted her buttocks blue, the colour of denim, just down to where her thighs start, with pockets, a fly, fringes, it’s incredibly realistic, you’d think it was real fabric, except that isn’t possible, because I don’t see how she could have got her pretty little bottom into such tiny, tiny shorts, as tight as a second skin … All the guys are following her about like stray dogs, like they can’t help themselves, sniffing around after her … Maria-Chjara keeps an eye on them in her little rear-view mirror, and plays at being Thumbelina, scattering bras and knickers around the big forest, like a tracking game for her army of suitors, her dozen or so starving little ogres.

  Maria-Chjara still hasn’t lost her virginity, but she’s told everyone she’s getting back on the plane to Bari on 25 August, and has confirmed that she will lose her cherry before she reaches the runway. That’s in six days’ time. What a way of cranking up the temperature in the heads of those little males being driven crazy by their hormones.

  You want my opinion? My favourite, the one who’s a whole length ahead of everyone, is the one who’s running the slowest. Who’s letting the others tire themselves out. My brother Nicolas! I’m taking bets. He’s the one that Maria-Chjara is going to choose. When the time comes. She knows. He knows. It’s making my brother a bit too proud. Borderline arrogant. Borderline jerk.

  But I’m not objective.

  I’m in love.

  I want to see Natale again. I want him to take me on board. I want him to notice me.

  I didn’t know something like this could exist, looking at a man for a quarter of an hour, swapping a few words and then not being able to think of anything but him, day and night.

  Is this love, can you tell me?

  Suffering unbearably for a man who has nothing to do with me, who’s probably forgotten me already, who only spoke to me as a way of getting close to my mother.

  Tell me?

  Besides, Maman is now a length ahead of Papa. They talked yesterday about the evening of the twenty-third, there was some hard bargaining, and Papa finally gave in. We’re all going for drinks at my grandparents’ place, Arcanu Farm, before my parents go on up to Casa di Stella to celebrate their anniversary.

  All the cousins are going to the A Filetta concert. Everyone except us.

  Maman has won. She deserves her bunch of wild flowers on Saint Rose’s day. That’s making her a bit conceited too. But at least it means we don’t have to go and listen to the polyphonic music, that’s certain now.

  I’ll tell you about it, but first I have to tell you about 19 August.

  About what happened on 19 August 1989, i.e. today.

  Far away, very far from here.

  But close, very close to Maman’s heart.

  A crazy thing.

  * * *

  19 August 1989 … he thought again.

  After that day, nowhere in the world, nothing would ever be as it was before, even if no one had really measured the scope of what happened on that day. The biggest revolutions, the ones that overwhelm mankind, wear a mask.

  19 August 1989. The dawn of a new world.

  No one cared, however, everyone was on holiday.

  No one cared that day, no one except Palma.

  24

  17 August 2016, 10 a.m.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you, Clotilde. I even thought you would come before now. I thought I’d be the first person you would come and see.’

  Clotilde gazed at the sea through the enormous bay window of the Punta Rossa villa. The view was still as dizzying as ever. The house felt as if it was hooked on to the cliff, and you’d only have to open the French windows to plunge straight into the Mediterranean. Turning on your heels and looking through the opposite window, you could see the entire Balagne mountain range, Notre Dame de la Serra at the front, then Capu di a Veta, Monte Cinto behind that.

  A timeless wonder.

  Only Natale had aged.

  He’d aged a great deal.

  She stepped towards the viewing platform above the rocks of Punta Rossa, taking care not to be spotted by the few tourists standing by the lighthouse. She had told Franck she was going to see the police in Calvi, to ask Captain Cadenat if he had any news about her wallet. And it was only half a lie, after all, since a policeman’s daughter lived here, at least when she wasn’t reporting for duty at the Balagne Medical Emergency Unit. Aurélia Garcia had become a nurse at the Unit’s hospital complex in Calvi, she started early and wouldn’t be home before midday.

  Natale had offered her a coffee. Clotilde had accepted.

  Natale was taking his time.

  It would take some time to break the ice.

  Clotilde let the wind ruffle her hair. She was fine out here, on the terrace. She had no desire to go back inside the villa. Normally, she thought, houses are a bit ordinary on the outside, boxes on standardised plots, almost identical, even in the most affluent areas. But hidden behind the boring façades were naked intimacies, rooms in which every trinket on every surface, every frame hung on every wall, every book on every shelf revealed an identity. A person with a particular taste, a soul.

  The very opposite of Punta Rossa.

  The strange chalet set down on the red rocks, constructed entirely of wood and glass, had been built by Natale, plank by plank, window after window, when he was barely twenty years old; it could only have been inhabited by some exceptional individual, at least in the eyes of the hikers who spotted the building at the top of the customs path. Every detail had been conceived with the greatest originality, from the shells built into the pillars to the dolphins sculpted in the beams. The Punta Rossa villa had been photographed, googled and facebooked thousands of times, as Clotilde had discovered through all those years of tapping its name into a search engine and dreaming, fantasising about the architectural marvel … and the person who built it. And yet, which hiker could have imagined that the house contained the most banal, the most kitsch interior decoration? Above IKEA cubes arranged in a wide variety of shapes – bookcases, television table, side table, stools, coffee table – a few posters attempted to bring some colour to the lacquered whiteness of the furniture: Klimt kisses, Renoir piano lessons, Monet water-lilies.

  ‘Your coffee, Clotilde.’

  Natale had told her he was in a bit of a hurry. He started work at eleven o’clock. He was in charge of the fish counter at the Super U supermarket in Lumio.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, Clotilde.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘As if I’ve disappointed you. With all this. With the person I am.’

  ‘Why? Why would I be disappointed?’

  ‘Don’t make it worse.’

  He went off and came back a few seconds later with a glass in one hand, a thimble-sized goblet, filled to the brim with pink liquid.

  A liqueur or medicine?

  Clotilde knew Natale must be just over fifty now, but she still thought he was handsome. Even more handsome than he had been at twenty-five. But disillusioned. Melancholy. Almost cynical. She left the terrace to join him in the villa. A photograph of Aurélia hung above a sideboard with a sliding glass door that revealed a collection of egg-cups, rolled-up napkins and tea caddies. Clotilde stared at the photograph. Aurélia was smiling. A designer dress. Tanned skin. Plucked eyebrows.

  ‘I’m not disappointed, Natale, it’s just I would never have believed it.’

  ‘Neither would I.’

  He turned round. His thimble was already empty, and full again. Clotilde had spotted the bottle this time, and it wasn’t on the shelf of the medicine cabinet.

  Myrtle liqueur, 40º, Damiani Cellars.
>
  Clotilde couldn’t leave it there. Not after all these years.

  ‘Natale …’

  Too late to retreat. She looked away from the picture of Aurélia.

  ‘Natale, I can tell you now, it’s all in the past, as they say. But you know, all those years, even if we never wrote, phoned, or contacted one another, you were still always there with me. I’m not talking about the summer of ’89 when I was fifteen, our boat trips, Revellata Bay. I’m talking about afterwards. My life afterwards. You were the proof that everything is possible, Natale. A kind of compass, with a fifth cardinal point, somewhere among the stars.’

  His answer cut through the air.

  ‘You shouldn’t have thought that, Clotilde. I didn’t deserve it. That’s what life is about, seeing your teenage idols ageing in front of your eyes. Seeing them disappoint you. Seeing them die in front of you.’

  At the point I’m at, Clotilde thought, I might as well empty the old toy-box right down to the bottom.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, I was still in love with you.’

  Another thimble emptied.

  ‘I know … but you were fifteen years old.’

  ‘Yes. And I collected skulls. I dressed like a zombie. I loved ghosts.’

  Natale merely nodded, so Clotilde went on.

  ‘You were in love with my mother. It drove me mad. If only because of my father.’

  Natale walked over to Clotilde. He seemed to hesitate before resting a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘You hated your mother too much. And you loved your father too much. Logically, it should have been the other way around, but at fifteen you didn’t understand.’

  Clotilde recoiled. The implication behind Natale’s words had taken her by surprise.

  You didn’t understand.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing, Clotilde. Nothing. There’s no point shedding light on old shadows. Let your parents rest in peace.’

  Natale turned his eyes away from the Mediterranean to look towards the mountains, losing himself in Capu di a Veta.

  ‘I didn’t hate my mother,’ Clotilde continued. ‘I was jealous, that’s all. It was so ridiculous, when you think about it. So ridiculous when you know what happened next.’

  For a moment Natale’s eyes lit up, and Clotilde felt as if she was fifteen again. Natale answered, looking away from her.

  ‘You were stupid, most of all! I liked you, with those black clothes of yours, your rebellious teenager look, your notebook and the novels that you wedged under your arm. You were a dissident, like me. But another kind, another colour.’

  Other words collided in Clotilde’s head, words uttered by Natale in another life, on Oscelluccia beach, words she had never forgotten.

  We’re the same, you and me, Clotilde. Fishers of dreams against the rest of the world.

  Natale filled another thimble, then sat down on an awful aubergine velvet armchair.

  ‘I’ve seen Beetlejuice since then. I’ve also watched Edward Scissorhands again. And each time I thought of you. That crazy girl Lydia Deetz who talked to ghosts. Are you still as wild about Winona Ryder?’

  You’d better believe it, sweetheart!

  ‘Definitely. I saw her again in Black Swan with my daughter Valentine. Five years ago. She didn’t like the film or the actresses. But I loved it.’

  Another thimble. He’d already had quite a lot, even if the level of the bottle from the Damiani Cellars hadn’t dropped that much. Clotilde went on: scraps of complicity coming back.

  ‘You know that Winona Ryder wasn’t even eighteen when she fell in love with Johnny Depp, who was nearly thirty. They were together for four years. They got engaged. Johnny Depp was so madly in love that he had Winona Forever tattooed on his arm, can you believe it?’

  Natale didn’t say anything. That in itself was a kind of answer, particularly when you knew what happened next, the break-up of Winona and Johnny. Johnny altering his tattoo when he couldn’t get rid of it, changing it to Wino Forever …

  The myths of adolescence.

  Believing, being disappointed, fading away.

  Myths drowned in myrtle liqueur.

  Natale had nothing more to say.

  But Clotilde did. She wasn’t going to give up quite so easily. She looked at Natale sitting in the armchair that was too low for him; there was no guarantee he’d be able to get up to go and sell whelks and codfish from his frozen-fish section.

  ‘I saw Maria-Chjara last night. She was singing on Oscelluccia beach.’

  ‘I know. Hard to miss the posters.’

  ‘She didn’t sing too badly, either. I saw the Aryon too.’

  ‘I’m sure, she’s still moored there. Still clinging on.’

  Natale was clutching his empty glass, as if he no longer had the strength to fill it again.

  ‘I’ve also seen Cervone. To tell you the truth, I see him every day. I’m staying at the Euproctes campsite. Orsu, too, although I didn’t recognise him. Papé Cassanu, obviously, and Mamy Lisabetta. I didn’t remember Speranza, but …’

  ‘What are you searching for, Clo?’

  I’m trying to provoke you. To get a reaction out of you. To make you smash that bottle of myrtle liqueur against the wall and hurl yourself into the Mediterranean to sober up. I’m trying to talk to you about all the mysteries that are twisting my guts, I’m asking you to help me, you, the only person I can trust.

  ‘The truth. Is that OK, Natale? I’m searching for the truth! I can unwrap it for you, if you like – everything that’s gone wrong since I came back to La Revellata. Sergeant Garcia, your father-in-law, told me that the steering mechanism of my parents’ Fuego was sabotaged. My papers were stolen too, from the safe in our bungalow. With no signs of a burglary. It’s impossible, but that’s what happened. And that seems almost normal compared to everything else. The letters. You’re going to think I’ve gone mad, but too bad! I’ve had messages from the beyond. Messages from Palma.’

  Natale was shaking. He set the thimble down on the table closest to him. As if it were burning his hand.

  ‘Can you say that again.’

  ‘A letter, it was waiting for me at bungalow C29. Somebody delivered it there a week ago. A letter to me that only my mother could have written.’ She forced herself to laugh. ‘It’s the kind of thing that would make you believe in ghosts, don’t you think, Natale? If only I still had Lydia’s gift.’

  Natale got up. He came towards her with great determination, as if he had suddenly sobered up.

  ‘They do exist, Lydia.’

  ‘Lydia?’

  ‘Clotilde, I mean. They do exist.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ghosts.’

  Clearly he hadn’t sobered up after all.

  ‘I’m going to let you in on a secret, Clotilde. It’s something I’ve never dared tell anyone, let alone Aurélia or her father. If I’m living in this house as if it’s a prison, if I’m living with Aurélia, if I’ve abandoned all my dreams one by one, it’s because of ghosts. Because of one ghost in particular. You were right, Clotilde. Ghosts do exist, and they ruin our lives. I know you’re going to think I’ve lost my mind, but I don’t care. You’ve got to go now. Aurélia will be back at midday and I don’t think she’d like to find you here.’

  Out of the question. Natale was messing her about.

  ‘What are you doing with her anyway? And don’t talk to me about ghosts.’

  He looked out through the bay window, staring at the cross on the top of Capu di a Veta.

  ‘It’s funny, Clotilde. You’ve aged more than I have, in the end. Now you’re the one who doesn’t believe in the strange or the irrational. In spite of all the signs. But since you don’t want to hear me talk about this ghost of mine, I’ll simply tell you that I had my reasons for giving in to Aurélia’s advances. Good reasons, compelling reasons.’

  The spark that had appeared in his eyes had gone out once and for all.

  ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘rational couples, th
e ones who start out without attraction, without illusions, are the ones that last the longest. For one simple reason, Clotilde. One implacable reason. Because you can’t be disappointed! Because things can turn out better than you expected. Who can say that about a love story? Who can say that about passion? That it’s better at the end than it was at the beginning?’

  A voice screamed inside Clotilde’s head. Not you, Natale, not you! Anybody can come out with this stuff, any old bastard, but not you!

  For years, when things were going badly, she had thought of him. Of Natale Angeli, fisher of mermaids, dolphin-trainer, a man who believed in the stars, in his dreams, as big as the ocean. Who could communicate that faith to a young girl. Who could make her believe that life wasn’t messed up in advance.

  Natale Angeli.

  Who set down the thimble in which he had drowned his illusions, ready to go off to his shift at Super U. That same fearful gaze, from one window to another, like an euprocte salamander in a vivarium, caught between mare and monti, as if he didn’t know from which direction the ghosts might appear to spirit him away.

  ‘And what about you, Clotilde, are you part of a happy couple?’

  And bang! What did she think?

  Pontificating at him like that, being a bit arrogant, borderline stupid.

  The rebellious girl, the skulls, the raven-black hair.

  What did she think?

  That Natale wasn’t disappointed in her, too?

  25

  Saturday, 19 August 1989, thirteenth day of the holidays

  Prussian-blue sky

  It’s funny.

  It’s the afternoon and people are watching television. Well, some of them are.

  Glued to the screens as if something serious has happened. As I walk along the diagonal path, I try to peer into one of the mobile homes owned by some Italians – the ones who put up a huge screen, built a concrete flight of steps in front of their door, a tiled garden path and a little wall around their site planted with pansies and geraniums. Apparently they live here nine months a year.

  I don’t see anything on the screen.

  Or I do, but they’re ordinary images, not the kind of scenes you’d expect from an attempted assassination or a declaration of war. Honestly, you won’t believe it – all I can see are people picnicking, with little picnic blankets, in a field, surrounded by small bumpy hills.